


Two Is A Lonely Number

by WriteandRoller00



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Airachnid is an asshole, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Megatron is an Asshole, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, Starscream redemption, the trials and tribulations of a panicking seeker dad and his chaotic natured sparkling apprentice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:07:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24513592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteandRoller00/pseuds/WriteandRoller00
Summary: The war took a heavy toll on the elusive seeker population. Many had fought and lost their sparks in the heat of battles, others had run to far off planets to escape the impending massacre of their kind they knew would come from a grounder's rebellion. And now, there were only two left in existence. One that witnessed the destruction of Vos and took revenge ones who destroyed it, and the other has never seen the seeker city at all in their entire function. One that was mature and self-centered on keeping themselves alive, the other young and able to through caution into the wind. And now they were cornered under unwanted attention from both sides, forcing an dangerous hand that they must play to stay alive. In the grand scheme of things, they always remember one important detail.Two is a lonely number, but they will never let it become one.
Relationships: Starscream & Original Cybertronian Character(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 44





	1. Fireflies and Rusty Knives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flights are fun... until they are not.

If there was one thing that Jointlock loved about Earth, it was the expansive sky she got to fly through to escape the boring and claustrophobic days on the Nemesis. That, and all the human culture she and Knockout would marathon in the medbay sometimes late at night when no one else was up.

Earth had a really pretty sky, one that reminded her a lot of Cybertron's. The sunrises and the sunsets were full of pastel colors and different shades that would cover the star Earth orbited as it rotated on its axis. Of course, this solar system only had one star and all of the planets had to share it, which seemed a bit ridiculous, but the small femme could see that none of the planets had a big enough mass to have the stars rotate around them. Jointlock would usually take her flights either very early in the morning or in the afternoon before the evening rations were given out as she wanted to watch the large star rise and set on the planet she had been living on for the past couple of years. There were clouds, which she learned were filled with water and not with hydrochloric acid like on her home planet. It was a welcome surprise, as she didn't want to risk melting her plating off when flying through them.

After Megatron had come back from the dead during their adventure to the Arctic, Jointlock had been taking more flights further into the afternoon. For those three years that the warlord had been out in space, life was pretty good and leisurely. She was able to do what she wanted, within limits of course, but she could go out to explore the planet without someone constantly looking over her shoulder. No one would be demanding her presence on the command bridge or in the throne room to give an update report on the ship, no one would come and ask her to check their computer terminal to make sure it was working, and no need for her to lock her workshop when she was working on projects. Now? Everything started to go downhill with Megatron back and the new addition of Airachnid.

Over the last couple of days, the small femme had started to notice small changes in the power flow within the Nemesis. When Airachnid joined the ranks, she and Starscream seemed to be having a silent war over the position of SIC. While the seeker was still currently the second in command, one slip up could mean life and death for him. Megatron had been recently looking for a replacement for the seeker, while Jointlock thought that the spider was way more likely to backstab him than Starscream, and Airachnid was hoping for that change to get closer to the warlord. Knockout and Breakdown also noticed this, but only as she had been talking about it to them during a break, and she didn't know Soundwave's opinion on the matter. He didn't seem to care.

Around two hours into her flight, she spotted a small lake in the middle of the forest that she was passing over. Pulling up and into a roll, she dove nose first towards the body of water with a giggle. Before she was about fifteen feet from the ground, she pulled herself straight and streaked across the water, leaving waves of the war behind her from the power of her thrusters. Upon reaching the edge of the lake, she transformed into a skid on her pedes. It took herself a while to stop sliding, ending up at the treeline and looking back at the waves crashing down from where she had flown across the water. Pumping her fists into the air, she yelled out in excitement and laughed at herself. "Primus yeah!" she exclaimed out loud and giggled, "Another perfectly executed aerial act by the brilliant engineer, Jointlock of Tyger Pax!"

Of course, no one was around to hear that but she took pride in knowing that she was able to pull off one of the tricks she had seen Starscream do before. His trick wasn't over a body of water, but he was a trained aerial commander and she wasn't. Joint wanted a safeguard of water underneath her in case her trick didn't work out so well.

Walking over to the water's edge, she squatted down and watched the small creatures swimming around underneath the surface. Because of the war, she never got to see any wildlife and Earth seemed to have so much of it. It fascinated her that all of the fish swam in large groups and there were small amphibious creatures sitting on rocks and fallen trees nearby. Jointlock soon went from squatting to sitting, watching the sun start to fall beyond the canopy of the trees and soon down past the horizon of the planet. The sky shifted from yellow, to orange, and then to dark purple and black as stars started to pop out from the inky blackness above the planet that was space. It was beautiful to the small femme, although she could space travel and see if up close and personal. There was something unexplainable about seeing the night sky from the perspective of another life form that made the jet wish she could sit there at the lake for hours.

Soon, her favorite part about sitting out on Earth during the night happened. One by one, small flashes of lights started to swarm around the lake. The little flashes came in from beyond the trees, flying around and exploring the open area. She had learned that these flashes of light were from a bug called Lampyridae, or fireflies as humans called them, which were tiny bugs that used bio-luminescence to communicate with other bugs of the same species. She had first experienced it when she was out of a flight a couple weeks ago and stopped in a forest when she saw the millions of lights from the sky. It was another one of the reasons that Jointlock liked taking flights closer to nighttime, as it gave her a chance to see these small creatures out in the masses.

The femme watched some of the fireflies wander over and land on her plating, lighting up to her plating with little lights. She giggled, looking up at the tiny bugs as they crawled around on her helm. Jointlock gently let one crawl onto her digit, watching it flash its backside at her before flying off. She reset her optics, flashing them a couple times and laughed a bit when she saw some of the bugs answer back. Smiling, she stood up from the spot she was sitting and took a picture of the area, as she wanted to remember to come back here on another flight. It was around the time that everyone got their evening rations from the storage rooms, and she didn't want to be late to retrieve her cube from the mass of cons that swarmed the mess halls. She would probably go and eat with Knockout and Breakdown anyways, planning on showing them the spot she had found while out. The two liked to take road trips while out and the lake was a pretty romantic spot besides the mud.

Pain. The world was immediately shrouded in pain as she felt like her chestplates imploded on themselves. Jointlock gasped hard, optics going wide as she clutched over where her spark chamber was and fell forward into the muddy earth underneath her pedes. She caught herself on her servos and knees, but groaned as she experienced the cybertronian equivalent of a heart palpitation. Her optics reset hard, processor muddled with a ringing sound as she tried to figure out why she was in pain. Her HUD didn't have any warnings coming up from loss of energon or an external injury, and her frame would have felt pain sooner if it was an internal bursting of lines. She frantically searched for a cause of her pain, panicking even more that she couldn't come up with one. Her energon levels were well above 50%, she hadn't pushed her thrusters too hard when out, and she just got checked over by Knockout the other day. The only thing that she could think of was that she pulled on her wings too hard in her jet mode and they got loose, which Starscream would throw a whole fit about later.

The femme instantly stood up and felt her spark drop in her chest with dread and absolute terror. Starscream. "Frag!" she cursed out loud, transforming instantly from the ground and rocketing up into the air. How could she have forgotten about Starscream? He and Megatron went out to that abandoned mine today and she was already out on a flight before knowing if they came back or not. Anything could have happened knowing the strain between the two of them. It was one-hundred percent possible that the warlord could have decided to bury his second in the cave and never look back. Or worse, the leader of the Decepticons did a repeat of what happened during his awakening from his coma and the seeker was lying somewhere dead on the warship. She felt herself taking in more air than her processor needed, pushing her thrusts to their limits and getting lightheaded as the small jet tried to get back to the warship.

Seeing the Nemesis come into view, she boosted herself towards the landing dock and transformed hastefully. Stumbling over her bulky pedes on the landing, she fell forwards a bit before regaining her balance and dashing towards the dock doors. Not wanting to wait for Soundwave to open the doors for her, she ran to the nearest air vent and popped it off its hinges. Holding the grate over her helm, she closed the vent behind her as she slid down into the ship's vent system. She ran through the metal tubes, ducking under spinning fans and climbing through the tight spots until she reached the maintenance ladder hatch that she was very familiar with. She pushed open the hatch, looking down the chute with the ladder on the other side and decided to forgo the ladder and jump.

In all honesty, this wasn't the best decision that Jointlock had ever made and with her intellect she should have known the laws of physics a bit better, but she was in a full blown panic at that point. The throbbing feeling that she was ignoring in her spark was getting worse and the small femme didn't have time to process whether or not she had time or not to physically climb down the ladder. When she realized that she was falling and was coming close to the hab suite floor of the ship, she dug her clawed digits into the walls to slow her descent. Not realizing how much that would hurt, she nearly went into shock on how quickly the friction made her digits heat up. Yelping in pain, she soon slowed right above the hatch for the living quarters floor and yanked open the vent shaft. She winced as her claws were now dulled from the friction and orange hot with heat. The small femme ignored the pain, dashing a few vents down in an effect to find the one right outside Starscream's hab suite.

After running for a while, she found the weld scars she left on the wall of the vent to mark where the SIC's chambers were. Hesitant to go rushing inside because of the idea of Megatron still in there, she watched from the vents in silence for a couple moments. The pain in her chest was still strong, but she pushed down her pain receptors as much as she could without her frame going completely numb. It helped her forget the burning sensation in her digits from when she just used them as elevator brakes. She wouldn't allow herself to pass out when she knew that there was a possibility that Starscream was dying.

Jointlock didn't have to wait long to get her answer as the door to the hab slid open and the imposing shape of the Decepticon warlord and leader stepped out into the hallway. Her body went rigid still as the mech seemed to glance back into the room, wait a couple seconds and then allowed a large devilish smirk to grow on his face. Once the door closed behind him, he walked away with a small trail of energon smearing the floor behind him as he went. The image of the warlord's servos covered in supposedly Starscream's energon burned into the small femme's processor as he left the main hallway and entered into his quarters at the end of the hall.

It was deathly silent as the small femme was petrified against the wall of the vent shaft. It wasn't the fact that Megatron had attacked Starscream that made her this scared. Jointlock knew about the constant battle between the two officers for a long time and wasn't new to the sound of arguing and yelling on the bridge in the middle of their day shift. It was the sight of Megatron finishing up the act that shocked her this much. She had never witnessed Starscream getting injured by the warlord, only seeing the aftermath when he was already patched up and put back together again. The sight of the seeker's energon on the mech's servos racked her processor for a moment. The many times she had seen Starscream in the medbay over the years flashed before her optics, but replaced the closed wounds with open ones and lots of energon.

Soon realizing that she had just been standing there in the vent for about a minute, she frantically kicked the ventilation grate right off of the wall and slid out. She didn't even bother putting it back, knowing she could just fix it later. The small femme reached up and quickly punched the master code into the pin pad beside the door while sending a comm to Knockout.

As soon as the white noise stopped on the other side, Jointlock didn't even give the medic a chance. ::Come to Starscream's hab now! The door will be unlocked when you get here!:: she yelled at the mech on the other end. The door slid open a few seconds after accepting the override code to the systems. It didn't help her emotional state that the room wafted the smell of split energon at her as soon as the door opened.

::W-What?:: the medic asked back, sounding a bit frazzled by the frantic comm. ::Jointlock, what happened-::

::Just get here, Knocks! I don't have time to explain!:: Jointlock growled back before hanging up on him.

The room was completely dark besides for the continuation of the trail of blue energon on the floor that the warlord left in his wake. The small femme took a deep breath and entered the room, looking around as the door closed behind her. The thud of the door spooked her a bit, making her jump in place and her spark pulse faster in her chest. The silence of the room didn't help, her fear and dread increasing as she wondered if Megatron took him when he left. She doubted that was the case, or she would have seen him carrying the seeker. He wasn't in the medbay, as their resident medic was clearly out of the loop on what happened as well. As her optics adjusted, she could see how trashed the room was, with datapad scattered all over the floor and the personal terminal in the room broken and dented inwards. The berth was a mess; it was dented and had claw marks against it along with splotches of energon.

"S-Starscream?" she called out in almost a whisper, still in shock from what she saw.

Silence. The small femme's optics dilated slightly and frantically surveyed the room for where the seeker might be.

"Starscream?!" she repeated herself but louder this time. "Where are you?!"

There was a small engine rumble from somewhere on the other side of the room accompanied by a soft gasp. It scared Jointlock, making her jump in her plating before hope irradiated from her frame. She raced around the side of the berth, ignoring the sound of energon underneath her pedes as she scurried over where the gasp had come from. The small femme couldn't ignore the slight feeling of relief she got from hearing something alive within the room, a small smile on her face.

The smile immediately faded into sheer terror as she felt her voice get caught in her throat. Before her, there was a critical injured seeker sprawled on the floor. There was a huge pool of energon underneath him, split out from the various gashes and puncture wounds all over his frame. His frame was dented all over, crushed in certain places, and it appeared as if Megatron decided to throw him around the room like a wolf would to its prey after catching it. The smell of the energon on the floor was immense and fuming throughout the room. It smelled like this in the room that they found Starscream in after Megatron's reawakening, like death and burnt fusion cannon charges. There were fried wires coming out from his neck cables, it bruised and tinted blue with the amount energon rushing to the area. One of his optics was cracked, but it was luckily still intact. If it wasn't for the slow rise and fall of the seeker's chassis, she would have thought he was offline by now.

The worst part was his wings, which were bent and cracked down to the main wing joint. They were leaking energon, adding into the puddle on the floor. They were still attached to him, but it was very clear that Starscream wouldn't be flying for a while. After staring at them for a while, she could see the words "ALL HAIL MEGATRON" shredded into them, which explained why the warlord's servos were soaked in energon when he left. She secretly hoped that Starscream was already unconscious for that part, knowing how sensitive and dear his wings were to him.

"J-Joint...?" The raspy voice took a second to snap her out of the stupor Jointlock had entered while staring at the seeker. She looked down at her commanding officer to see him staring back at her with the look of guilt written all over his face. His optics flickered a couple times, showing how unfocused he was from the energon loss. "You...you shouldn't be in here."

Sadly, Joint was lost in her own world of flashbacks. Millions of images flashed in front of her optics of mechs and femmes she had seen dead on the battlefields of Cybertron. Memories of walking through stale energon and broken frames resurfaced and made her entire frame start to shake. The femme didn't have these flashbacks often, only appearing in bad fluxes, but the vorns she spent out by herself, alone, surrounded by dead and dying soldiers everyday would come up once and awhile as she knew she would never forget them. Jointlock stared down at the seeker with a blank, yet terrified expression as her outside senses numbed completely.

Seeing this, Starscream instantly got worried. He, himself, had gotten used to seeing himself covered in energon and in pieces over the years, but the small femme had never seen him like this. He was very careful to make sure that never happened. He groaned, forcing his frame to work with him as he struggled into a kneeling position and scooted closer to Jointlock. He grew increasingly worried when he could tell that her legs were slowly bending in under the weight of her chassis. "Jointlock, s-snap out of it," he croaked at her, fighting with his voice box to work. "Look at me, please."

The seeker waited a couple seconds, waiting for Joint to look up at him from her frozen state, but it never happened. His broken wings fell with fear that she had gone into complete shock in seeing him like this. Starscream didn't hesitate to pull her into his arms, seeing that she was about to fall over due to her own weight, and hugged her close to his chest. After a couple minutes of reliving life before the Decepticons, Jointlock seemed to snap out of whatever stupor she was in and clung to his neck. He heard soft sobs come from her, her frame still shaking and trembling from the amount of shock she was in. It physically hurt the seeker's spark to see Joint like this. A seeker's main function was to protect sparklings, no matter what the circumstances were and how much danger they were in themselves. He gently caressed her helm, holding her in his slightly broken arms as she seemed to go through an episode of flashback from Tyger Pax. What a hellish battle that was.

The sound of the door opening caused Starscream's battle computer to be set off, his free arm transforming into his blaster towards it and letting out a feral growl at whomever entered. His wings hiked up in an intimidating position and his one and a half optics burned with rage at whoever thought they could waltz in here and take Jointlock from him.

"I come in peace," the mech in the doorway said back, servos in the air and not moving. "Joint commed me in a panic and then hung up on me. I see why now."

Recognizing it as just being Knockout, Starscream ex-vented heavily. "Of course, she would. She has always been way too caring about me."

"In this case, I wouldn't say that's a bad thing, Starscream. You look like Megatron put you through a meat grinder," the cherry red medic commented briefly, setting his medical equipment out on the berth.

The SIC gave him an incredulous look. "A what?" he asked. What in the name of Primus was a meat grinder?

Preparing his welder, Knockout thought about it and decided he didn't need to know. "Nevermind," he replied.

He started with Starscream's legs, sealing up all the gashes that were clawed into them. Flickering his vision back and forth between his work and the small femme in Starscream's grasp, he frowned slightly. While he wasn't on the ship for a long period of time, he and Breakdown had quickly grown very fond of Jointlock. She hung out with them a lot, sharing their enthusiasm for human culture and had the intellect of a full grown femme who had been working in the engineering field for vorns beyond her age. The mech especially took a liking to her when she stole him metallic gold detailing paint from a human autoshop and she painted with him glyphs and detailing that he had shown her earlier that week. He hated seeing Jointlock so upset, probably because she felt slightly responsible for everything that happened to her mentor.

Once he finished fixing his legs, he decided to try and mend the seeker's wings the best he could. He didn't want to try and move Jointlock out of his arms to fix them, knowing he would probably get scratched by him being on high alert. He moved around the back of the mech, and winced hard at the sight of the carving. "For the love of Primus..." he cursed under his breath, gently bending the mech's wings back into place.

"Did he carve his name into my wings again?" the seeker asked in a quiet voice, trying not to alert the crying femme in his arms to what had happened. He knew she had seen it, but he didn't want to make it worse. Starscream gritted his teeth in pain when his wings were being manhandled.

"It seems Lord Megatron has taken a liking to branding you," he replied, using a fiber cloth to clean up the energon before welding closed the shredded wings. "At least this one wasn't as bad as last time."

The seeker shuddered when he briefly remembered the last time their oh so gracious leader decided to carve his designation into his wings. He was conscious last time, chained up in the brig and he didn't remember when it stopped. Everything blurred together in a constant string of pain after being dented and broken for an Earth hour. His wings twitched as they were worked on, the letters soon disappearing and replaced with smooth welded metal. Once his wings were repaired, he felt a certain lightness to them. It would take a couple days for the sensory net to reconnect itself to the welded metal, but he could last a couple cycles without flight. He had done so before and he could do so again.

It took around 30 minutes for the medic to weld and repair Starscream's frame, including fixing his neck cables and welding shut the crack in the side of his face. There was a discolored scar there from where it was welded, but the seeker knew he could get it painted over tomorrow. His optic was replaced and a new one was put in, the usual deep red color a little paler as the replacement needed time to adjust. Knockout leaned back and let the seeker examine his work, but he was confident that he did a satisfying job. The last thing he needed to do was to weld close the large gashes across the seeker's chestplates, but he was finding that to be increasingly difficult with Jointlock still clinging desperately to Starscream's chassis.

"I need to move her," he mentioned, gesturing to the small femme who was since gone quiet after crying for a good portion of his repairs. "I need to weld those marks closed before you get Earth bacteria into your lines."

Starscream huffed, conflicted with the order from his medic, but gently detached the small femme from his frame. She whimpered, but didn't fight back. Her energon stores were burnt through after trying to break the sound barrier on the way back to the Nemesis. Knockout took her from the seeker, quickly scanning her over and doing a quick medical evaluation of her. He took a small cube of energon out from his subspace and handed it to her, watching as Jointlock grabbed it and slowly started taking sips from it. The medic placed her on the berth, moving one of the many fiber tarps on top around her so that she could be comfortable while he finished up.

The seeker watched her, noticing that her digits were cracked slightly and charred. He wondered what happened to them, but decided to wait until later to ask. The sooner he was repaired, the faster he could get to comforting his charge. He didn't watch Knockout weld his chest up, trying to focus on Jointlock as she slowly drank the energon she was given. If he wasn't mistaken, she had just come back from her flight when she found him and probably didn't stop to go and get her energon ration from the mess hall. Thoughtless, he thought to himself. She should have known better to worry about him like this. Millions of other times he had been beaten and this was the first time she actually came and checked on him.

"Alright, you're done," the cherry red medic announced. This made both Jointlock and Starscream look at him. "Take it easy for the next couple cycles, both of you, and I mean it."

The rest of the night went by slowly after that. Knockout had helped Starscream up from the floor into his berth and left him a full ration of energon to nurse on. After he left, there was a deafening silence between the small femme and the seeker where to the two of them were just refueling and trying to get back to some semblance of normality. They drank the energon, both of them back up to comfortable levels for them to feel refreshed and a little less stressed. No one was dead, no one had died, and the day was over.

Starscream was the first to break their silence, sending a small pulse to his little charge through their bond. He realized shortly after he had woken up from unconsciousness that Jointlock had found out he was hurt because it had opened after he panicked. He wanted to know where she was, glad to find that she wasn't on the warship, but forgot about the consequences of opening up while getting attacked. She must have felt his pain and panicked as well, rushing back to the ship to try and find where he was. He could imagine the sheer terror she had gone through, having only once before felt pain through his side of the bond.

There was a small pulse back, it sad and scared. The seeker sighed softly, a guilty and sadden expression on his face as he realized that she thought she was going to lose him. "Joint," he called to her, tilting his helm a bit. "Come over here and sit with me."

The small femme looked up, snapping out of her own world again. The last hour and a half had become completely numb and blurred together for her. Her mind had kept flashing back to Cybertron and the piles of death mechs she had seen while she traveled between battlefields. Her optics were dull, a soft reddish pink that used to be a bright light red. She stood up, carrying her empty cube and sitting down against Starscream's side with a gentle lean. Seeing that he was looking at her with a worried look, she bowed her helm and mumbled a quick "sorry".

"You do not have to apologize for anything, my little gremlin," he cooed, expression softening a bit and scooping her up back against his chest. Empty cube forgotten, she curled up there in his arms and listened to his spark while he talked to her. "If anything, I should be apologizing for throwing you into such a state of panic. I never meant for you to see me the way I was."

"It's okay, Screamer," she replied, a small smile appearing on her faceplates. "I'm just happy you're okay."

If anyone were to walk in on the two of them, which was impossible since the door was locked, they would not have recognized Starscream in the slightest. He had a smile, a genuine smile, on his face and the look a carrier would give their sparkling. His frame was completely relaxed, wings in a neutral position and an almost soft look about him, definitely not the treacherous and cunning second that the Autobots and even the Decepticons came to know. He was happy, not a "victory over the Autobots" kind of happy, but a warm happy that he knew Jointlock was okay, she was in his arms and he was right there with her.

Since he was finally relaxed, he decided to catch up with his charge about her day. "You enjoy your flight? I know you have been telling me about these 'flying fires' that come out during the night cycle that you wanted to go see," he mentioned.

She giggled, bringing a bright feeling to both of their sparks. "Fireflies, Star. They are Earth organics that use bio-luminescence to communicate with each other like grounders do. I snapped a picture of them before I was gonna leave."

Through their bond, she shared the memory of her sitting near the lake with all of the fireflies around her and the sound of the organic life in the background. It was peaceful and the seeker took in the moment in his helm. He would never admit it to her, but it made him at ease to know Jointlock was able to live out a semi-normal life on this planet. Rolling his optics, Starscream chuckled softly. "I will never understand your and Knockout's obsession with this planet."

"That's only because you haven't experienced it yet! There is so much cool stuff on this planet!" she exclaimed, putting her arms out wide. "There is a huge canyon range in Arizona where you can needle through and flying over water and having it spray under your wings is amazing!"

Speaking of wings, Starscream gently ran his servo over her back. He briefly imagined his charge with wings like he had, them broad and colorful. They would probably be a lavender purple, just like the rest of her frame with the white accent stripes that she had in her alt mode over. He sighed, knowing that Jointlock wouldn't be getting them soon, as the Decepticons didn't have the means to upgrade her frame to its next stage. She had gotten a couple upgrades after leaving Cybertron, but the newest one was going to have to wait a bit. Seeker frame blueprints were hard to come by and while the second was sure they had them stored on the ship somewhere, he didn't want to risk Megatron denying her an upgrade.

He felt two tiny servos on his checks, zoning back into reality to see that Jointlock was holding his face. She could feel his guilt from their bond, as it was still open on both sides, and she smiled at him. "Don't worry. I'll get them soon. I know you want me to be like you, Star. I will, I promise," she replied, giggling softly and bumping forehelms gently.

Starscream chuckled back, holding both sides of her helm with clawed digits and holding them together for a couple seconds. He didn't get to spend time with Jointlock like this a lot, as he was always busy on the bridge with his work as second, or healing up in the medbay. "My little gremlin. What I would do without you?" he cooed softly. He gently pulled her away and sat her down against his cockpit, stroking her helm and pushing down the 'mohawk'-equse fins on her helm. Remembering seeing her digits earlier, he took her servos into his own and examined her burnt digits tips. "Now what happened to your digits?"

Jointlock instantly pulled her servos out of his grip, it was not strong in the first place, but she crossed her arms over her chest to hide them from Starscream. A small hue of blue spread across her face from embarrassment. She was a complete idiot for thinking that jumping down the maintenance chute was a better idea than using the perfectly available ladder that was already in there. "Nothing happened," she replied with a pout, refusing to look at him.

"You are clearly embarrassed about it, Jointlock," he pointed up, raising a brow plate. "Please don't tell me you went near that volcano and tried to fly near it."

"...I jumped down the maintenance shaft to get here quicker and didn't think about using the ladder, so I had to slow myself by digging my claws into the wall to slow my descent," she muttered under her breath.

"You did what?! Why in the name of Primus would you ever think that is a good idea?!"

"I don't know! I was panicking and I thought you were dying!"

"That does not mean that you should forgo logic and make stupid decisions! Look at your digits! They are brittle from the friction, and your sensory net is probably damaged! You do servos-on work, Jointlock!"

"I know that! Well I'm sorry that I was more worried about the fact that you might have been dying somewhere on the ship, which you were, than my own self preservation!"

That last comment stung a little bit. For a mech who was all about self preservation nowadays, Starscream's angry and shocked expression faded into a frown. He gently cupped the femme's face, tilting her helm up to look him in the optics. He could already tell she was starting to get upset again as the feeling of fear appeared from her side.

"Don't you ever, ever, think that my life is more important that yours, Jointlock," he said sternly. "You are the next generation of Cybertron. You were one of the last sparklings made before the Battle of Tyger Pax and I am just some old seeker aerial commander that went in way too far over his helm when the world around him was unfair and dishonest. You know what war looks like. You have lived in it all your life. You have to make sure it never happens again when this is all over. Whether I am there or not, you need to make a better Cybertron than how we left it. I will not lose the only happiness I have left to this Primus-forsaken war."

Jointlock internalized that quietly and tried to remain that way while tears started to fall again. She took a sharp vent in, trying to hold back her shaky exhales as she pulled Starscream's servos closer to her chestplates and hugged it. She knew that in reality, there was a high possibility that her guardian was going to die during this war. With the Autobots slowly taking over the smaller mines and the more current run-ins between him and Megatron, she could come out of recharge to find one half of their bond completely gone. She didn't want to lose him, though. He was her guardian, the first adult to actually care for her in her entire life and the thought of him moving on to the Well was spark shattering for her.

"Promise me you will stay with me, Star," she begged quietly, looking up at him with tears streaming down her cheeks. She was trying really hard not to sound like the young sparkling she was, but it was coming increasingly hard. "I don't want to be alone. I don't want to feel you die."

The seeker immediately pulled her up into another hug, rocking her side to side as he softly cooed to her, "Shhhh, Jointlock. I am not going anywhere. Not even the Slagmaker himself is going to take me from you." He rubbed the back of her helm and let his spark reach out to hers in an attempt to console and comfort her. They didn't have their bond open like this often, Starscream having his side closed as he didn't want her to feel his pain when Megatron decided he wasn't up to his standards as his second. It felt nice though, the emotions flowing between the two of them.

Once Jointlock was somewhat calmed from her emotional state, the seeker tucked her into the berth next to him. He draped his arms over her, pulling her close to his chestplates so that he could listen to his spark. "Two is a lonely number, but I will never let it get to one, my little seeker," he told her, gently squeezing her servo in his and nuzzling her.

The small femme nuzzled back, yawning and clutching to his neck as she slowly passed out into recharge. He was right, though. Two is a very, very lonely number.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know how the story was so far! Feedback is always appreciated!


	2. In the Dark With Our Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories are relived, a spider rears its head and Jointlock starts to lose her patience with authority.

_"What is that?"_

_"I...don't really know. It came off of the assembly line like that."_

_"'Came off the assembly line like that'? What is that supposed to mean? Did someone change the schematics for the frames halfway through production or something?"_

_"No! This one was in the middle of the assembly. The frames before and after it were perfectly normal and up to code."_

_"So it's a defect?"_

_"Maybe? I mean, if it was a system defect, it would have been immediately pushed into the smelting pit for reuse. System defects don't have the capabilities to house sparks. This one, somehow, does have a spark."_

_"Then why hasn't it moved? It's just...watching us."_

_"We did put it in a box. I don't think it can move very well in there, even if it is freakishly small. Maybe its processing unit didn't fully develop? I really wouldn't know unless I opened it up and found out for myself, but I'm heading the warnings from the guards that it's a biter."_

_"A biter? What, like it has fangs?"_

_"I don't know. Haven't checked. Hmmm, maybe there was a system malfunction and it glitched. I'll get another technician in about it tomorrow. Move, I want to scan it."_

_"Yesh, you don't have to be so pushy."_

_"...hm. It's a femme. That's surprising. This center doesn't make femmes. Not anymore, at least. It still has a serial number, but there's not designation pre-resgistered under it. It's almost like the system made a sparkling."_

_"Made a sparkling? You're joking, right? Nobody makes sparklings anymore. We're in the middle of a Primus-forsaken war! I think it's just a defect and we should just throw it to the smelting pits. A merciful death."_

_"What?! There hasn't been a sparkling born in vorns and you just want to shove it down the garbage chute?! It's still a life, even if it is a glitch in the system. That new Prime says that-"_

_"'All sentient beings have a right to choose their path', yada, yada, yada. I know! But look at it! It looks like a fragging con! The claws, the supposed fangs, the beady red optics! What if it escapes and destroys the facility?"_

_"It's tiny? What is it gonna do-how the frag did it get out of the box?"_

_"What?...holy scrap, the box was locked from the outside with an electronic seal. You can only unlock it with a keycard."_

_"I-I don't know. I could be a malfunction with the box."_

_"Everything's a malfunction with you, isn't it? Well, what was the function batch it came out of? Maybe it has an outlier spark."_

_"Um, it was a part of the combat mechanic batch, so it's definitely not a warframe type that would cause an outlier. All of them are mechs, tall, have slim frames, have ground vehicle modes. This one was like the system flipped on its helm for a second and made it short, bulky, and it...it has a flight accessible T-cog?"_

_"So the system basically made a seeker?"_

_"Essentially? But all of the seeker coding was kept in the Vosian facilities and were destroyed in the bombing. There's no way that the system made a seeker when all of the seeker facilities are gone and buried."_

_"You think the cons sabotaged the assembly line?"_

_"That...or maybe the system just had a glitch, like I've been saying this entire time. The system isn't perfect. And we are sitting right next to the Well, so maybe a random spark wandered in."_

_"Sure. What are we gonna do with it, since you're so against us just tossing it into the pits? You wanna keep it as a pet or something? It's kinda sad looking, you know, with those tiny wings and all."_

_"Well, it's a miracle that it exists in the first place. I'll have to re-write its serial number, but we should really come up with a designation for it so we don't keep calling it, you know, 'it'."_

_"How about 'Little Monster', since that's what it is."_

_"No, that's just rude. Hmmmm, well, when it attacked the guards earlier, it dislocated the security captain's arm joint. So-"_

_"Ah! It poked me! That's it, I'm putting it into stasis!"_

_"Oh, come on! It's probably just curious! ...and you shocked it anyway."_

_"It was going to k-ll me! -hat di- you ex-ect?"_

_"----just a---arkling.----we're calling -- Jointlock."_

****

Jointlock woke up with a yelp, panting heavily as she clutched at her side. She looked around frantically, seeing that she was in a dark room with nobody else around her. She let her breathing come back down to normal before telling her servos off her side to look at what was causing her pain. Of course, there was nothing there. It was just her normal everyday plating, although it was slightly scuffed up from having to replace the tubing that connected the main power core to the engine blocks. That seemed to explain why her frame ached and burned slightly. For some reason, she could smell burning protoform, but she passed it off as being from all the work she was doing the previous night at her workbench. Checking her chronometer, the small femme could see that it was already 4:00am in human time, meaning that she would have had to wake up in two joors anyways, so she voted for staying up.

Slamming her fist against the wall, the lights came on in the small room that was her workshop. When first moving into the Nemesis, the tiny engineer found that the warship didn't really have an engineering workshop. It had labs for chemical and medical work, but no physical workshop that she could find. So, being the pack-rat she was, she found a mostly empty supply closet on the same floor as the medbay and moved in. She souped-up the small closet into a suitable workshop, outfitted with welders of all types, diagnostic tools, and a complex storage system that she placed underneath the floorboards. Making the myth true that seekers didn't like small spaces, she made it so that her workbench and berth came out from the walls so that she would have more space than she originally had. Why she recharged in her workshop was one of the many mysteries Jointlock had yet to discover herself, but she had grown accustomed to the constant smell of machine oil and burnt metal.

Sliding out of her berth with a groan of protest, Jointlock pressed a button on the wall that made her berth disappear into the wall and her workbench pop out. If she wasn't gonna go back to bed, then she may as well just tinker with some random things while she was waiting for Soundwave to ping her COMM. On a normal day without weird night fluxes, she would wake up at 6:00am, get her morning ration, collect the request forms for the day from the communications officer, spend the entire time in her workshop completing the orders if she didn't have to work on the ship, fit in some chats with Starscream, or Knockout, and then she would stay up late watching whatever human television show she was obsessed with at the moment. Last night was a hectic night, as she completely lost track of time and stayed up way too late watching this series about this alien human that traveled around space and time in a blue box. She, being what people called a 'geek' had tried to figure out how another species had made a portal, warping subspace and how that would exactly work off of the laws of quantum physics, but decided to tell that part of her processor to shut up and watch the show.

"Let's see what's on the tinkering list," she mumbled out loud to herself as she pulled her personal datapad out from her subspace. "Hmmm...make more frequency discs? Nah, I have plenty of those. Upgrade holographic projection system? Maybe later. Explore illegal human 'liquid fire' chemical? Uh, sure, why not."

Jointlock put her datapad away, opening one of the drawers in her workbench and taking out what looked like a case for glasses. Opening it, the small femme took out a pair of aviator goggles and slipped them on over her helm spines. The lenses were tinted red with the flexible metal making them fit around her helm nice and snug. She doesn't remember who she stole them off of, but they were her first and only personal possession that she owned. Sliding them down over her optics, she watched the world dissolve into a bright red around her. The small femme took a deep vent before clicking her against her audials to patch herself into one of the many saved musical station frequencies she kept on record. Hearing the start of what humans called 'classical' music play in her audials, Jointlock immediately got to work on tinkering.

Motioning her servos over her workbench, a large holoscreen popped up in front of her and she slowly scrolled through it before finding the chemicals that she needed to make this chemical compound called 'napalm'. Apparently, it had been made illegal in human society because of how much destruction it caused during several wars that this planet has had. It was 46 parts polystyrene, 33 parts gasoline, and 21 parts benzene, which together made a tar like sludge that prevented the gasoline from burning as fast as it did. It would be dropped in bomb-like forms to explode on impact, covering the surrounding area and enemies with the burning tar and causing major burns and fire damage to anything it touched. Of course, regular fire didn't hurt cybertronians, so Jointlock figured she could replace the gasoline with high-grade energon or unrefined energon crystals, and the other chemicals with similar cybertronian based ones to get the same results.

Selecting the three materials from the catalog she had pulled up on the screen, she watched as the floorboards next to her split apart and a platform brought up the chemicals to her workstation before disappearing back below the floor. The small engineer stuck her glossa out of her mouth in concentration as she took a handful of energon crystals and put them in a petri-dish. Getting a small syringe, she pulled up a proportional amount of each chemical to the ratio given by human standards and slowly dropped them in the dish besides the energon crystals. Pushing her swivel stool back from the workstation, she used the control panel on her forearm to turn on the heating system in her desk. She watched the petri-dish heat up and got off her stool to protect herself from any flying paste, hiding by the side of her desk as she counted down to the boiling point of energon.

Except nothing happened. She onlined her optics, offlining them in preparation for what should have been a small explosion and a tar substance flying through the air on fire. Carefully looking over the edge of her bench, she saw that the mixture was just sitting there, unaffected. Pouting, she got back up on her stool and wondered what went wrong. The ratio was right and the chemicals she replaced the benzene and polystyrene with had the same makeup besides the different natural elements, since they wouldn't work with energon. Maybe the ratio was different because of the different chemicals, since there wasn't really gasoline on Cybertron, as gasoline was made up of dead organics and they didn't have organics.

Moving a bit closer and staring at the petri-dish, Jointlock's shoulders dropped from their tense position and made a noise of confoundment. "Huh. That's weird," she said to herself, crossing her arms over her chassis. "I thought it would at least ex-"

The energon crystals in the dish suddenly burst into flames and exploded in the femme's face, causing a loud bang to resonate throughout the workshop and the workbench to be covered in a blue, murky slime and a dark cloud of smoke. Once the smoke cleared, Jointlock puffed out a bit of smoke and stood frozen in place as the upper part of her body was completely covered in black ash and some of the blue slime. Unfolding her arms to wipe the gel off of her goggle lenses, she looked down at herself with a bit of annoyance. Great, now she had to go to the washracks and wash all the slime off.

"Alright then," she said curtly, "Reminder to self: always expect delayed reactions."

Hopping off her stool, she grabbed a rag from near the door and started to wipe herself down. The ash came off easily, but the sludge that stuck to her frame was too sticky just to wipe away. At least she got that aspect of the chemical compound right. Groaning under her breath, she took her goggles off of her face, pulling them up to sit on her forehead and discarding the rag in the cleaning bin by her desk. The small femme walked out of her workshop, making her way towards the end of this hall as that was where the communal washracks where. Fortunately, she, Knockout, and Breakdown were the only ones that lived on the medbay floor so it was just shared between the three of them. It was still only 4:30 in the morning, and not even Knockout woke up that early to preen himself. So hopefully, she would have the washracks to herself and be able to wake herself up a bit more with the hot solvent.

"Hey, Jointlock!" The small femme looked up to see a pair of vehicons patrolling the floor in her direction. The one that had spoken to her was waving. "Primus, what happened to you?"

"Failed experiment. That's what you get for trying to tinker too early in the morning," she replied, smiling at the drone as he and his shift partner passed. "I'm hitting the washracks to go wash this off before Knockout has a field day about my paint coat. He already had one about my digits this week."

"Cool!" the other replied, probably smiling under his visor. "Say hi to Commander Starscream for me!"

"No promises, Steve!" she called back as the pair moved on with their patrol. Steve, or ST-3V3, was an interesting vehicon, to say the least. He was overly nice to Starscream, which is how she met him. The vehicon was trying to talk to the seeker commander on a bad night and got a hab suite door slammed in his face. Jointlock had witnessed it and introduced herself to him, and their acquaintanceship grew from there. On her midday ration break, she usually hung out with the vehicons on the lower levels when the medic duo were too busy with patients, or street racing most often. She actually learned very recently that vehicons do have faces, but they just keep them hidden under their visors since it was easier to mask expressions that way.

It took Jointlock about thirty minutes to wash all of the energon slime off of her frame and get the smell of burning energon to go away, which meant a lot since the femme rarely used the washracks unless she was actually dirty. Starscream slightly disapproved of this and Knockout protested that she should clean her frame more often, but there was no reason to when her job regularly made her covered with soot, ash, and other weird chemical discharges. Walking back to her workshop, the small femme put herself deep in thought about how to improve the chemical compound and confine inside of a small metal casing. If it did what it was supposed to do, then it could be useful on the battlefield and cause some serious damage to the Autobots. Being burned with energon fire was no joke, as it could cause plating to melt and protoform to warp in on itself. She could also use the chemical compound to figure out how to make a flamethrower, but she was taking it one step at a time.

Upon arriving at her workstation again, she pushed a button on the underside of her bench before cleaning down the top and starting over. The button turned on a red light outside of the workshop, meaning that she was working with volatile materials and it was a hazard if someone were to walk inside without knocking first. It didn't really matter anyways, as Soundwave forbade her from locking her door after she had accidentally impaled herself with a bolt gun, passed out from energon loss and the communications officer couldn't open the door because she manually changed the override codes. She also wasn't allowed to change the override codes again without Soundwave's permission.

The morning on the ship came and molded into noon. Around 6 o'clock, Jointlock had finally gotten the compound down to a science. It had exploded on time, it was still a tar-like consistency and she was able to light it on fire without it burning up or exploding again. All that was left to do was to make a grenade canister to store the gel mixture inside of and would apply a denotation and flame to the compound when set off. That had to wait though, as everyone else on the ship was up by 6:30am, and that meant she had her usual work day to finish. A couple joors passed and it became around 11:30, to which she had finished all of the request forms sent in from Soundwave and all she had to do was deliver them that afternoon to the respected stations before she could take the rest of the day off.

Rock music was blasting in the small engineer's audials as she was welding close a small cylinder-like capsule. Her goggles were back down over her optics, helping her see through the sparks and the glare from the high-powered tape welder she was using. Once seeing that everything was sealed tightly, she put the welder back down on its holster on the wall and double tapped the side of her goggles. Her vision zoomed in tenfold and she checked over the welding again before zooming back out, setting the canister down on the table. She rolled her wheeled swivel stool over towards a chill unit, playing the drum solo she was hearing with imaginary drumsticks before taking out the small vial of the gel-mixture that had been sitting in there. She rolled back over, slipping the vial inside and closing up the container with a click. Jointlock smirked, admiring her work and inspecting the outside.

"Now I just need somewhere to test it," she said out loud to herself while twirling it in her servos.

She felt something touch her shoulder, making her scream out in fear and jump a bit. The small canister was tossed from her servos, thrown up in the air above her helm. She recovered from the initial scare, optics going wide behind her goggles as she scrambled up to grab at the grenade she just built. Jointlock's claws clamped around the makeshift bomb and she pulled it down onto the workbench, panting and venting very hard. She watched the small device for a second before letting out air in relief that it wasn't going to explode. Forcing up the goggles up to her forehelm again and turned around with anger and shock, "Knockout! How many times do I...oh."

Standing very close behind her, and towering over her, was the black and purple frame of Airachnid. Jointlock's mind swarmed with the multiple possibilities for why she was in here. She knew Airachnid hated Starscream, as she was gunning for his spot of second in command. It was stupid to try and do that, since by all accounts Star was a much better strategist and aerials combatant than her. She was also a treacherous glitch who would do anything to get her way on the ship and get into Megatron's favor. Ultimately if she had seen the light outside, she wouldn't be in her workshop at all since she was still working with experimental and potentially dangerous materials. She didn't even know what would have happened if she dropped the napalm grenade and it had detonated. She chuckled nervously a little too loud as the purple-opticed femme smirked down at her. She didn't like that.

"H-Hello," she stuttered a bit, curling in on herself and shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "You must be Airachnid. Is there something I can do to, um, help you?"

The larger con's smirk grew larger as she leaned back a bit. Jointlock knew for a fact that she had no control over her EM field right now and it showed how much she was completely uncomfortable and wary of the spider. "No, not at the moment at least. I just heard there was another femme on the ship and I wanted to stop by for a visit," she replied with a chill in her voice. "You seem to know who I am, so why don't you tell me about yourself?"

"Um, well, my name is Jointlock," the small femme said, carefully introducing herself. "I'm the Decepticon's engineer and you're in my workshop. You're really not supposed to-"

"The Decepticon engineer, hm?" Airachnid cut her off, pacing a bit in front of her with a more sinister smile on her face. "Quite an important position for someone so young. It's a shame I've never heard about you or your work before. I would have sought you out sooner."

The thought of Airachnid seeking her out sent a small shiver down the small femme's back struts and throughout her plating. She knew of the spider's past, how she would seek out indigenous and endangered species on other planets and kill them for trophies, and she didn't want to be added to that collection. "Hehe, that's very nice of you to say that," Jointlock said nervously, laughing out of fear. "But as I was saying, you're really not, like, supposed to be in here when the red light is on outside the door. It's a safety hazard and, um, I don't want to be held responsible to any damage you might accumulate."

"Sure. As if a little welder burn is going to hurt me," the spider con replied and stalked up to the workstation and looked over the mess. She sneered lightly as scanned over the various tools and devices that were strewn about. The small engineer to a small offense to that sneer of disgust as she knew it was about her tidiness. While she didn't have the cleanest workspace, she at least knew where everything was and didn't have to spend five nanokliks searching her desk for her tools. She just reached over, grabbed them and continued. So what if she left raw energon out by her torch welder.

"Look, Airachnid," she started off, starting to get pretty annoyed with the amount of sass being thrown her way. If there was one thing that she learned from Starscream, it was to not take scrap from other Decepticons bothering you while you are working. "I'm sure you're a very...adequate femme and I would be happy to give you a more personal tour on my ever so small workshop, but I was about to go on my rations break and you just-"

Jointlock was cut off by laughing, watching as the tall spider femme leaned against her workbench as if she was welcomed there. There was practically smoke coming out from her audials she was so pissed off. "Look at you! Talking like one of the adults, are we? It's so adorable when the sparklings try to act all mature and important!" the black painted femme chuckled, leaning forward in the little femme's face and grabbing her chin to hold in her claws, but only to lose the grip and pick up the small canister on the workbench. "Now, what does this do?"

Looking at the small grenade with wide optics, Jointlock immediately leaped up from her stool to try and grab the object out of Airachnid's claws while dropping her torch welder. She snatched it, holding it in her clawed servos and scooting back on her stool while watching the demeaning look on the spider femme's face turn shocked. "Um, well, i-it's none of your business what it does," the small engineer protested and glared at her. "It's not even that important!"

Airachnid hummed in amusement before towering over the femme again and giving off a very menacing aura. Jointlock instinctively shrunk back against the ledge of the workbench and pulled her field in all the way so it was basically nonexistent. Her optics widened as the spider came to hiss softly under her breath as she got closer to her face, practically on top of her. "Yes, because you panicking like this and the increasing amount of fear don't give me any indicators whatsoever that you're lying to me. Now, I've never killed a sparkling before and I have a collection I would like to grow, so tell me what it does." the spider growled in the small femme's face.

"I-It's just a grenade!" the small femme blurted out in complete fear of the other femme and the threat of putting her in the mythical collection. "I was tinkering this morning and I decided to improve the design! That's all it is!"

The spider femme smirked before snatching the capsule back from Jointlock and examining it. "Clearly. There's not even a detonator on it," she complained with a disgusted look on her face. "Well, this has been fun, but I have more important things to do than to watch little sparklings play grown up. I'll keep this as a memento of my visit."

Having closed her optics when she thought Airachnid was going to swipe at her face, they shot back open as she watched the spider leaving with the supposed 'napalm' grenade in her servos. "W-Wait! That's the only finished one I have! You can't just take it!" she yelled at her while scrambling off her stool to follow.

"Just did, Jointlock!" she taunted back, tossing it up and down in her servos while the door to the lab opened behind her. "All hail Lord Megatron."

Before Jointlock got to the door, it slammed in front of her and somehow was locked. Growling in frustration, she stomped her pede into the floor a couple times to get out of the anger she felt. Baring her fangs at the closed door, she reeled back and slammed her fist against the wall panel beside the large closet door. The door, magically unlocking itself, opened and she could see that it had webbing sticking off of it, meaning that Airachnid was making a break for it. The small femme was on a warpath though, as she just had an invention she worked all morning on while slightly recharged deprived taken away from her by a creepy-aft spider lady with no sense of boundaries.

Scanning the hallways outside the room frantically, the small engineer quickly spotted the black and gold femme walking away on her ghastly spider legs towards the medbay. Breaking into a sprint, Jointlock raced after Airachnid with all intentions of ripping her device out of her servos and walking away. "Hey!" she yelled after the other Decepticon. "You can't just steal my stuff from me! That's my invention! I built it!"

Airachnid looked back, smirking and stopping in front of the medbay as the small purple engineer rushed up and tried to jump at her. She easily held her back with one of her legs and cackled at her. "It doesn't matter if you built it or not. The one who presents it gets the credit for it."

"But it's mine!" Jointlock growled, gripping at the spindly leg and pushing against it. "Give it back, you glitch!"

"Ooh, such a feisty sparkling," she teased again, cocking her helm to the side with amusement. "And what are you going to do if I don't? Shoot me?"

"Possibly!" the small femme yelled back, but soon lost her footing to the spider leg and got knocked back a couple meters onto her aft. She picked herself up from the ground quickly, trying to stand it before continuing to argue with Airachnid. "Just give it back to me! I don't even know if it works right!"

"Doesn't matter to me. At least I have a scapegoat if something does go wrong when I show it to Megatron," the spider con replied as she messed around with the grenade again.

There was a moment of silence between the two femmes before there was a beeping sound. Both Jointlock and Airachnid looked at the small capsule in the spider's servos with shock and tension to see that she had pressed down on the detonator button while handling it. The beeping started getting faster and the small engineer froze in panic, remembering the type of damage the 'napalm' was supposed to cause to someone and started booking it.

"Drop it and run!" Jointlock yelled back at the spider and didn't even look as she could hear the grenade get to the last leg of its countdown as she rounded the corner at the end of the hall by the medbay.

Unfortunately for Airachnid, she didn't have a lot of time to react before the grenade let out a high-pitched trill of beeps and exploded in her servos. The part of the hallway in front of the medbay was covered in blue flames and back smoke as the improvised cybertronian 'napalm' seemed to do what it was intended to do. Jointlock tucked herself around the corner, feeling the heat lick the side of her arm as the flames blew past where she was hiding. Waiting a few seconds after the heat died down and she didn't hear any screams of agony, the small femme peeked around the corner before sighing in relief.

The spider femme was still standing there, the walls and her plating covered in the same blue, murky slime that Jointlock had gotten every time that she tried the compound. Jointlock was so relieved that she didn't just kill someone with a grenade she made but was also a little disappointed when the slime didn't catch on fire.

"What in the name of Primus is this?!" Airachnid screeched, trying to wipe the sludge off of her black plating and growled in frustration as it stuck to her. Suddenly, there was the sound of hissing as some of the blue slime on the walls started to melt through the metal of the warship's walls. Everywhere that the compound had landed, there was metal that was slowly being eaten away by the sludge on top of it. Soon, the hissing moved to the spider femme's armor and she started screaming out as the slime melted through the layers of plating and sensors she had on her frame.

"Acid slime. I made acid smile," Jointlock said to herself as she slowly backed away from her hiding spot. She watched as the other femme and her made optic contact for a short second before Airachnid was thrown into a rage through the pain of her frame melting and charged at the small femme.

"Oh, I'm so fragged!!"

* * *

"Now, which one of you wants to explain what happened?!"

Jointlock and Airachnid were both glaring icy daggers at each other and they both looked a little worse for wear. Airachnid, after being burnt and impacted by the acid slime grenade, was mostly stripped of her black paint and parts of her armor were gone. There were also burnt marks on her face from the compound and it looked like it was rusted over. Besides the initial damage, there were dents and a couple gashes from the rage induced battle that ensued afterwards. She did not look happy whatsoever, but was trying to look more mature than she had acted in the last five breems. Jointlock, on the other servo, was covered with scratches, dents and had a couple clawed wounds across her arms and midsection. There was one mark across her cheek that was leaking energon slowly, a more sour expression on her face than the one of anger and rage that the spider con was giving her. Neither of them looked great after Breakdown had to come and separate them mid-scrimmage.

Both of them also had the same idea to point at each aggressively and yell, "It's her fault!"

The warlord standing in front of the two femmes narrowed his glare in true disbelief that that was the case, but he was restricting himself from whacking both of them over their helms as he needed his mechanic and his commander in working order after this.

"My fault?" Airachnid countered the accusation and attacked as if she was offended. "You were the one that gave me the grenade in the first place!"

"No, no, I didn't give it to you at all!" Jointlock argued back, plating flaring and another snarl escaping from her. "You waltzed into _my_ lab, stole _my_ invention, which I told you was experimental, and then proceeded to walk off with it!"

"Then maybe you shouldn't have kept your door unlocked so that people can just walk in," the spider growled back.

"How does that have anything to do with the fact that you _stole_ something from me?! And I'm pretty sure you would have stolen it from me anyways!"

"You think of me as a thief?!"

"Clearly, since you literally stole the device, ran away, and when I caught up to you, you proclaimed that you were going to claim it as your own! That's what a thief does!"

"Why you little high-pitched voiced son of a-"

"ENOUGH!" Both femme looked up at the very pissed off warlord standing in front of them and shrunk back a bit when he yelled at them. He growled, glaring down at both of them. "I don't care what was stolen from who, or whatever squabble you two are in the midst of! You destroyed the hallway in front of the medbay and that is something I cannot overlook!"

Airachnid quickly claimed a calm composure and smiled up at the leader of the Decepticons. "Lord Megatron, in all due respect to our engineering department, I believe that it may have been ridged, as there was no detonation on the device when I had examined it-"

"What?!" Jointlock protested, holding her arms out in a position of disbelief. "You pressed down on the button on the side of the canister! I saw you press it!"

"-as well as giving no indication as to when it was to explode, leaving me to be burnt alive by this gel-like acid that also destroyed the hallway! She can't go unpunished for this!"

Jointlock growled in frustration and tried to think how in anyone's mind that made any sense whatsoever. Soundwave probably had video footage of everything that happened in the hallway, how the spider webbed her door up to lock it, and how she pressed the button on the device and the small femme telling her to drop it and run. How was she in the wrong at all in this situation? Watching the warlord turn to her with a skeptical look on his face, mixed with slight disappointment, she regained some of her normal composure before giving her defense.

"Lord Megatron," the small femme began, being respectful by bowing, "what evidence do you have, physical evidence, of me ever wanting to sabotage entrance to or around the medbay at any point in my time serving you? I have always, to be best ability, tried to serve you and the cause in the most logical and efficient possible and you are going to believe someone who had abandoned our cause during the Exodus of Cybertron, over me, who has provided you and our forces with useful and versatile technology in the absence of our head scientist? I can promise you, my liege, that this was a pure accident. I cannot speak for Airachnid's motivations or her interests, but I would never cause intentional damage to the Nemesis. I'm sure Soundwave can provide you with evidence and audio to prove my point."

After finishing, she could feel a small pulse of approval in her spark as she saw Starscream standing somewhat behind Megatron with a small smile on his face. An actually proud smile, as well. One of the most important lessons that the seeker had taught Jointlock was she had to use her own assets to her advantage. She had never done wrong by Megatron before, and pulling the communications officer the warlord was so fond of into the mix would secure her side of the argument. Even if she did end up getting in trouble for the destruction of the hallway, she was still gonna be much better off than Airachnid, who had instigated the fight between them and had actually stolen the grenade from her. The second in command was proud of his apprentice, and the small femme could feel it through their bond.

Megatron looked to Soundwave for a brief moment, who nodded in agreement with Jointlock's statement. The small femme could see him grimace for a second as he was thinking, before a small smirk appeared on his face. She felt her spark drop slightly for a moment, thinking that her argument wasn't good enough even if the communications officer had agreed with her. 

"Very well, Jointlock. I will take a look into the truth of the events that followed up to the damage," the warlord replied, looking down at her and he could see the sudden change of fear in her optics. "But I cannot acquit you for your actions of arguing with a commander of higher rank than you, something I thought that you wouldn't gain from your mentor. You should know better than to speak out of line about a commanding officer, no matter what they have done to you. I cannot overlook that, as other people on this ship have had a history of doing the same. So as punishment for what has happened, you will be confined to your workshop for seven cycles."

The small femme stood in shock of her sentence. Seven cycles stuck inside of her small workshop with no contact with anyone else!? She felt her spark drop, knowing that she should just accept the punishment and move on, but she soon realized one important key fact about this. She wouldn't be able to go out on flights, and as a seeker, that was a serious problem.

"B-But Lord Megatron, I-I wouldn't be able to-"

A sword drove down inches from her face as it was impaled next to her pedes with the towering once-gladiator knelt down in front of her and venting over her frame. Jointlock immediately tensed up, taking a step back in fear as she stared into the optics of death that was Megatron. "I do not care if you are not able to fly or not, seeker!" he hissed at her and clenched a fist. "If I could, I would suspend your duties as the mechanic and engineer, but I do not have anyone else on this ship that can accomplish your tasks to your efficiency. I do not need more insubordination in the Decepticon cause. I would quickly learn to take orders without questions from your superior officers or I will see to it that you learn where your place is."

"Lord Megatron, if I may, I believe this sort of punishment is completely unnecessary." 

Megatron looked over his spiky shoulder plating to see Starscream had finally spoken up, his wings flared out a small bit to show his anger for what was happening to his charge. His true expression was hidden under a mask of professionalism. "She is still young and is bound to make mistakes. The punishment in which you are suggesting is extreme for one account of disobedience, especially since we both know what happens when seekers are restricted from flight."

"Is that right, Starscream?" the warlord asked his second, standing up and pulling his blade from the floor. He stalked over to the seeker, Starscream taking a few small cautious steps back. "To put it into perspective, if you made the choice to discipline your little apprentice with a more rigid agenda, she wouldn't be in this position right now, would she? I can only imagine where she gets this new disobedient attitude from."

The seeker immediately turned defensive as he had Megatron towering over him. His wings folded back in aims to protect them from any claws that might try to grab at them. "My liege, this could cause her damage to her psyche," he hissed angrily as his composure began to fade. "Do you really wish to impair our engineer just to prove a point?"

"I am teaching her a lesson, Starsceam. One that you are not able to grasp yourself. Since you care so much for her well-being, would you like to take her place? I'm sure I can fix you a punishment to match your recent failures," Megatron growled loudly, his digit forcefully pointing into the seeker's chestplates.

Silence came afterwards, making the warlord smile as he enjoyed exhibiting the control he had over his air command. He watched Starscream wince and turn his helm away, looking down at the floor and wings pressed to his back with back in submission. "...no, Master," he whimpered almost silently.

"Just as I thought. As you were, my second. And Jointlock? Disobey my orders and you will find yourself in a very similar position as the one your guardian has constantly placed himself in. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Lord Megatron," Jointlock squeaked out, her voice having grown quiet and even higher pitched than it was before.

"Excellent. You are dismissed," he told her briefly before walking over to Soundwave to investigate the supposed evidence that the surveillance mech had captured during the destruction of the corridor.

The small femme bowed and left the command bridge, seeing the ever-growing smirk on Airachnid's face as the door closed behind her. She walked silently down to her workshop, where the red light was still on outside the door and it was still unlocked. She walked inside, turning off the outside light with a push of that button under her desk before just staring at the walls. Her entire femme felt numb and as if her spark had just been ripped from its chamber. Is this what Starscream felt like before he and Megatron got into a confrontation with each other? That sword could have gone right through her and she could have been dead right now.

Jointlock roared out a pained yell of anger as she punched the wall, the lights inside her workshop and even outside in the hallway flickering off and on for a couple seconds before they stopped. The lights in the workshop went out completely, shrouding the room in complete darkness before the little femme broke out into silent sobs and tears. She let out all of the fear and complete terror she was holding in and just sank to the floor on her servos and knees. She sent a small ping to Starscream's COMM, hoping he would reply and she could hear his voice, but it didn't come through.

Evening rations came and gone, and the seeker second in command was a complete mess. He had to deny all of the pings that his charge had been sending him, as much as it pained his spark to do so. He had already spoken out against Megatron once and he knew that he would do something worse if he went after the small femme went she left. He continued working without saying a word until his shift was over and he immediately left the command bridge with a quick bow and goodbye to the warlord. Starscream had collected his and Jointlock's ration, silently happy that the warlord hadn't taken away or cut her rations, and went immediately to the workshop to check on his charge.

The seeker wasn't surprised to find the workshop door unlocked, but he knocked anyways. Waiting a couple seconds after he did so, he frowned slightly went Jointlock didn't answer. He sent her a soft pulse through their bond, not wanting to interrupt his apprentice if she was working on something important. About a moment later, there was a returned pulse but it was filled with sorrow and fear. It hurt Starscream to feel that from his charge and he sighed heavily out loud. He got angry for a second, cursing Megatron out in his helm for traumatizing Jointlock, but realized walking into the workshop angry wasn't going to help the small femme calm down and open up to him. He knew that much from dealing with the crazed warlord for all these years.

When the door slid open in front of him, he saw that the closet sized room was completely dark but there was also the sound of soft music playing from inside. Starscream stepped in, letting the doors close behind him before looking around for Jointlock. He walked towards the workbench, stopping when he had found the source of the music and looked around briefly. The sounds were delicate and fragile, like crystals clinking against each other inside of a crystal garden. Of course, the small femme didn't know what they sounded like, as there were no crystal gardens left by the time that she had come into being, but the seeker could remember the days he spent inside of them on his off cycles in Vos.

Kneeling down next to the desk, the grey seeker knocked softly on one of the sides and smiled a bit. "Knock knock," he asked, voice low and a lot softer than anyone could imagine it getting.

The side of the desk folded opened up, revealing what looked like a very defeated and depressed femme sitting inside of a little hideaway. The small cove she had made out of her desk was impressively compact, yet comfortable with all the pillows and thermal blankets that she had managed to cram in there. There were also small lights hanging down from the ceiling and fading in and out in a blinking pattern. Starscream remembered Jointlock telling him about those bugs that did the same thing a couple nights ago and only found it amusing that she would make the lights do the same. The most intriguing thing was the small box on the floor that was emitting the bright music, the lid open and showcasing what looked like a small human femme riding on a cleaning brush with a small organic feline. The sides of the box were engraved precisely with scenes of a small village by a shoreline, like the many he had seen on his flights, and there were Vosian glyphs etched into the top of the box's lid. It was a beautiful piece of engineering work, one that Starscream was sure Jointlock worked very hard on.

"What's this one for?" he asked as he slid himself back into the little cubby hole that his charge had made. He had to fold his wings down close to his back to be able to sit comfortably but he didn't mind that much. He had been trapped in a cave for hours only days before, so he could last sitting underneath a desk.

Finally, the small purple femme had lifted her face out of the pillow she was hugging close to her chestplates. Her usually bright red optics were dull, just like when Starscream was being repaired, and she stared at the small box before smiling a bit. "A human movie," she replied in a hoarse voice. "One from the island called Japan. It's about a witch who moves to a small town by the ocean and becomes a delivery girl for the bakery she lives in. She has a small feline friend who talks to her, but the two of them learn to grow up and get new lives. It was a good movie. I watched it after I got back here and I just finished making the music box. The song is the one that plays when she gets to town."

Starscream chuckled softly, gently rubbing his charge's helm spines down repeatedly as he listened to the music. "Humans seem to like having talking animal companions, hm?" he asked matter of factly. "I get the appeal of having a loyal pet following you around, but they would get unbelievably chatty."

The small femme giggled a bit before her optics grew dim again, her clawed digits kneading at the pillow in her servos. "Aren't I too chatty sometimes? Don't I get...annoying?" she asked the older seeker.

"Only when you get excited about something, but you know how to restrain yourself," he commented, gently cupping Jointlock's cheek with his large servo. He felt her lean into it, using his thumb to rub against the tear lines under her optics. "You handled yourself very well up there. I was very proud of you for holding your ground against Megatron."

"Yeah, and look where it got me," she groaned, face planting in the pillow. Jointlock squeezed the pillow out of frustration and Starscream could see her plating flare with anger as it filled her field. She soon growled and flung the pillow across the room. "It's not fair! I didn't do anything wrong and he punishes me for what!? Defending myself and my tech from a murder-obsessed spider glitch?! I worked so hard for him and basically built his warship up to perfection for him and this is the thanks I get?!"

"Language," Starscream commented with a disappointed look, watching the femme throw a fit like he would.

"Oh, shove it somewhere, Star!" Jointlock immediately fired back with flames in her optics. The older seeker, who would usually go unphased by comments like that, froze and widened his optics as she seemed to seethe at him. It took a moment for Jointlock to realize what she had said before the flames were gone and she looked horrified with herself. "I-I'm so sorry, Starscream! I didn't mean it! I-I was just so angry at everything and...and..."

The seeker commander watched his charge melt back into tears for what he was sure wasn't the first time today. He frowned and reached his arms out to pull the small femme into his chassis. Starscream didn't have to wait as Jointlock moved forwards and collapsed against his front in a pile of sobs and hiccups. He leaned back against the wall of pillows and gently rubbed her back as she continued to cry in his arms, trying his best to comfort her. The seeker opened his side of the bond up, allowing his charge's emotions to flood in and he could feel the turmoil that was brewing inside of her. She was having the same dilemma he had many vorns ago when Megatron punished him brutally for the first time: why would something they were so loyal and devoted to hurt them for doing nothing wrong?

"I forgive you, you little gremlin," he said softly, watching her venting come back to a more normal pattern. "And luckily, Airachnid has been forced to work in some mining operations for the next couple of cycles, so she will have her servos full of laboring work for a while."

Jointlock gave a soft giggle and smiled weakly, her optics flickering and growing dim. The flickering of her optics made him remember their rations and realized very quickly that Jointlock hasn't refueled all day. Starscream picked up the cubes that he had brought and handed her one, watching as she immediately took it from his servo and started drinking. The older seeker chuckled, petting the back of his helm while he refueled himself. He watched her for a while and saw the cut that Jointlock's self repair systems had taken care of, and furrowed his brows. He gently ran a digit over it, receiving a confused like from his charge before she went back to finishing off the cube.

Things were getting too dangerous now, for his charge and himself. Airachnid was seemingly after Jointlock's helm, Megatron was very close to replacing him with the traitorous femme and disposing of him, and now the warlord was beginning to treat Jointlock like he was treated before everything went downhill. He knew things were getting bad for himself after Megatron had returned with the Dark Energon, but this was the first time that he had officially threatened to end his charge's life. He sighed softly, looking down at the small femme in his lab and realized what the next course of action was.

He needed to find an exit plan and he needed one soon for both himself and Jointlock. They needed to defect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is always welcome. Hope you enjoyed!


	3. Canon and Prose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jointlock and Starscream decide where their loyalties lie.

" _...they glide through the water with unmistakable grace, remnant of an ancient past they dive and they rise from the ocean's murky depths to it's sun-kissed shores, rousing fear and awe like no other creature in the sea..._ "

Jointlock was pretty sure she broke the record for how many videos about sharks one person could watch in a sitting. It was the fourth cycle of her isolation punishment and the femme was starting to go stir crazy with boredom, so now she was resulting to watching online internet videos about nature and prerecorded movies she had stockpiled up on a backup hard drive. She had already completed her tinkering list, or at least the items that she could tinker with without leaving her room, and talking to Knockout and Breakdown over comms had become frustrating when she couldn't go and actually see them in person during their breaks. Even if she could figure out some way to sneak out, Soundwave had optics everywhere on the warship, so she could disable the cameras herself or go through the vent shafts without him noticing. For someone with the amount of naturally occurring chaotic energy she had, it was starting to get really, really hard for her to sit and do nothing for a whole week straight.

The small femme sighed heavily, mindlessly watching as another shark video started playing on the screen in front of her. This one was about a very big shark that apparently went extinct called a Megalodon, and her chaotic deprived mind started to piece together that the name sounded very similar to a certain warlord's and that his denta kinda looked like a shark's teeth. One could say that delirious inspiration struck as she scrambled to pick up one of the main datapads she had laying on the floor and took out a light pen from her subspace to start doodling. Giggling through the entire process, she tilted her helm sideways and stuck her glossa out of her mouth a bit before smiling devilishly as she watched an animated fish swim around the screen with a photoshopped image of Megatron's helm on it while making a biting motion. At least there was one use for the human software that she had discovered.

After making the animated Megatron-fish, she slumped back down against the pillows behind her. Jointlock tapped the metal wall next to the holoscreen with her pede and watched as the screen disappeared, leaving her in an almost completely dark workshop with just the fairy lights from her hideaway glowing over her. Her back itched liked the Pits, but no amount of scratching was getting rid of it. It was the itch to go outside, to fly and soar through the sky at her top speed, to escape the confines of her tiny room. The small femme started to feel the burning sensation again as the distraction of the videos was gone and brought her mind back into thinking about what it would feel like to have the cold stratosphere around her alt mode as she dove and performed aerial tricks with wild abandoned. Thinking about flying made her back start to burn with irritation, but Jointlock knew that itching the plating would only make it hurt more.

This was why Megatron had picked this type of punishment for her. He knew that seekers needed to fly and restricting or prohibiting flights was the worst thing someone could do to a seeker. Sky Call, as most Decepticon medics called it, happened when a seeker couldn't fly. It started out with involuntary twitching and progressively got worse and worse until the seeker's mind completely deteriorated into insanity. The burning and itching that the small femme was feeling kicked in that morning, it having been seven cycles since her last flight. Since her wings weren't separate appendages, the places where her wings would be started to feel like they were seizing up and like scraplets were gnawing on her plating. With three more cycles left of her isolation, Jointlock knew the pain would only get worse until she actually went on a flight and she didn't want to think about what the next stage of Sky Call was going to be. The small femme curled up on herself as she tried to ignore the itch, which she had been trying at for the last couple of joors and silently wished she could have her guardian here to comfort her.

Evening rolled around and Jointlock was silently tearing up as the burning in her back had started to travel up to her shoulders. One of the vehicons had come to drop off her evening ration early, saying that Starscream had something he needed to take care of during the time he usually would come down and visit with her, so she was now refueling in deafening silence at her workbench. The small femme couldn't sit underneath it anymore, as she felt like the walls were closing in on her and trying to seal her in. She knew it was just the Sky Call affecting her, but when already stuck inside of a room, tight spaces were not a seeker's friend. Her clawed digits were twitching involuntarily as she was trying to hold onto her ration cube without dropping it, mindlessly taking small sips as she slowly felt the Sky Call itch underneath her plating.

What had she done to deserve to be in this type of pain, she began to think to herself. Why was Lord Megatron doing this to her? She had never done wrong by him, always following orders and completing assignments on time. She never disobeyed his command, was always polite and respectful towards him and yet she was being forced to suffer for something that wasn't even her fault. She was framed for a crime she didn't commit, there even being video evidence of it, yet Lord Megatron was believing that traitorous spider over her just because Airachnid was kissing aft? He just...turned a blind optic to her honest statement and almost killed her on the spot for trying to protest how bad being locked inside of the warship would be for her.

Losing her patience with all of the pain and hurt of disbelief, Jointlock screamed loudly and threw the cube of energon she had in her servos at the wall opposite from where she was sitting on her desk. It shattered into pieces, the liquid energon staining the wall and pouring down into a puddle on the floor. She watched the energon slide down the wall with tear-filled optics, not trying to stop them as tears and sobs started escaping from her. They weren't angry ones or sad ones, but ones of frustration and confusion as she tried to understand why. Was this what Starscream felt like before he was punished for something he was blamed for? Was this what he felt like before he was beaten with an inch of his life left and leaking energon out on the floor?

The small femme sat there on top of her desk, tears streaming down her face and felt the overwhelming need for someone to come and comfort her. She pinged Starscream's COMM, knowing he was probably still busy on his shift but was hoping he could come rescue her from the well of emotions she was drowning in. She waited a couple seconds, bringing her arms up to wipe the tears away. She didn't want to be a sobbing mess when Starscream answered.

No one picked up.

Jointlock frowned a bit, pinging him again and waiting for a couple seconds, receiving nothing from the other end. Over the span of the next few minutes, Jointlock sent about a dozen more pings to the seeker's COMM and no one of them received a reply. There were a couple reasons why he probably wasn't picking up, like if he was having a meeting with Megatron or other officers, but it wasn't like her mentor to just blatantly ignore him. The fact that he didn't come to deliver her now wasted energon ration himself was a bit concerning as Starscream was the one that had been doing it everyday while being locked inside. He made a point to be there for her while she was undergoing the suffering of Sky Call, being a seeker himself and knowing how to help her. The only reason he wouldn't be answering was if he was busy with something important that he didn't want her to find out about.

Curiosity got the best of her, being a distraction against the itch to fly, and she scooted off her workbench and onto her stool. She had regained her composure as her focus was now directed on finding out where her guardian was. She onlined the holoscreen and typed in the command that accessed the audio logs on the ship. Soundwave always recorded and filed everything that happened on the ship, so if Starscream was on some sort of private mission, then they would be a log of it. Jointlock was briefly stopped by a program asking for the authorization code, but being the mechanic had its perks and she had the master codes for every system, even the ones that the communications officer personally made. She scrolled up to today's logs and saw one from Starscream, but it was only him and Soundwave.

The next one was from a conversation on the command deck and she narrowed her optics at it, as it was unlisted. There were no destinations listed underneath the log time and date, along with no synopsis of the log. Soundwave always labeled his work, being the perfectionist and workaholic he was. She clicked on it and sat criss cross on her stool, helm leaning on her servo as she listened in.

**[Start: Log Recording-Unlisted]**

_"Is this true?"_

_"Starscream never mentioned it?"_

Jointlock felt anger rise up in her spark, denta bared and face scrunched up at the sound of Megatron and Airachnid conspiring together. She would think that the spider con would get tired after kissing so much aft, but she never seemed to stop. The small femme almost wanted to turn off the log, but knew that she would have to continue listening if she wanted to find anything out.

_Megatron: "If he is up to his old tricks, I will grind him into power."_

Rude, the small con thought to herself, as if rude even described how wrong grinding someone into dust would be.

_"A-hem."_

_"Starscream."_

_"Lord Megatron, please excuse Airachnid's impertinence. Now, what was it that I allegedly failed to mention?"_

_"The Harbinger."_

The small femme turned away from the recording for a second, pulling up another holo-screen and searching up the term 'Harbinger' on the ship's database. It brought up a scale representation of a transport ship that was used for causing scientific and experimental technology for the war. All Decepticon ships had a similar angular design to them and usually were marked with a status. Jointlock remembered once helping to build a ship like it while still on Cybertron, since she was one of the only well-known mechanics and engineers besides Commander Shockwave, who wasn't even a physical science engineer. It was a weird name for a science vessel, as the term 'harbinger' meant to be a forerunner or to relay a signal.

_"...what about it?"_

_"Eons ago, a Decepticon transport crash-landed on this planet."_

_"Oh please, common knowledge. I scouted the crash site when we first arrived on Earth."_

_"Then I presume you recovered the experimental weapon prototype the Harbinger had been transporting?"_

_"U-Um..."_

Jointlock looked back over at the screen playing the recording and furrowed her brow plates even more in suspicion. There was nothing listed on the database about the Harbinger's internals. She found it suspicious that the spider femme knew that this so-called 'weapon prototype' was on this ship and it was never recorded. If Starscream had scouted out the ship, he would have definitely logged it into the computer and being the engineer on the ship, the small femme would have heard about it. Everything about the conversation strangely seemed to be tipping in Airachnid's favor, and Jointlock didn't like it.

_"Where is the crash-site?"_

_"It was never logged into your ship's database."_

_"You failed to record the coordinates of a Decepticon transport!?"_

_"W-what? But I-I...um, an oversight, Master. But, I noted its exact location."_

_"Then you can lead Airachnid there, so that she may retrieve the prototype for me."_

_"My personal native guide. How delightful."_

**[End of Log]**

Jointlock sat there, staring at the holoscreen as the rest of the log came to a finish and she replayed Starscream's reply to Megatron, him saying, _"W-what? But I-I...um, an oversight, Master."_ The stammering in the beginning of Starscream's reply started to give it away something was very wrong with that conversation. Starscream was going to protest something, but suddenly thought against it, and was roped into a mission with Airachnid, explaining why the seeker wasn't answering his COMM and didn't come to deliver her evening ration. But something felt off about how Airachnid knew everything there was about the science vessel yet there was nothing recorded on the file, as it was reported that the spider had crash-landed on Earth herself very recently.

Wanting to investigate further, the small femme stood up on her seat, leaning forward and squinting really hard at the holoscreen to see that the Harbinger file had been updated recently, although it didn't give an exact time when. Jointlock hummed, still glaring at the screen as she sat back down on her stool. Flipping over her forearm, she pulled out a data transfer cable and pulled it into the port on the side of her workbench. The cord connected with the holoscreen and watched as a couple pop-ups littered the screen with code. Usually, she would use the cable to take measurements for the engine, but she soon started to program it to do other things, like changing all of the master codes on the ship and scrambling the old ones.

Pressing and swiping a few options on the screen, she let the program she definitely didn't steal from Soundwave run and the Harbinger file magically seemed to update itself back to what it was a couple hours prior. As the file refreshed, Jointlock could perfectly see everything that was discovered on the ship from Starscream's scouting mission and the exact coordinates of where it was located on Earth. And since Soundwave's coding mark wasn't on the redactions, the femme easily figured that Airachnid was the one that changed the file, as she seemed to be the one to bring it up before the recording started.

Pulling out the cord and retracting it, Jointlock sat there staring at the file to try and figure out why Airachnid was trying to pull this off in the first place. Soundwave would find out she redacted it and sabotage was a big no-no within the Decepticon faction. What was she gaining by lying about the file and then dragging Starscream out with her to go and find it when she already knew where it was? And recalling correctly, Airachnid hated Starscream just as much as she hated her, so why be so happy to be on a mission with him?

It clicked in her helm after a few seconds and the small femme felt her spark drop in her spark chamber. She _wanted_ to be alone with Starscream. Everyone on the Nemesis knew she wanted to be second in command, it being obvious with all of the sweet talk she was giving to Megatron all the time, but the seeker was in her way. What better way was there to get rid of the competition than dragging them out to the middle of nowhere, offing them and then coming back and claiming that it was a pure accident? With the seeker gone, the position would be vacant and being the only other officially ranked commander onboard, that would make her second by default. She would win and make Jointlock's life a living hell for what happened days prior.

And the sad thing that Jointlock realized, was that she was the only one who really cared about if Starscream was dead or alive. No one would go after him, or try to find him, or even think that maybe the spider killed him in cold energon. Everyone else would revel in the death of the seeker, while she would then be alone. Again. And there was nothing she was going to be able to do about it.

_"Two is a lonely number, but I will never let it get to one, my little seeker."_

Yeah, Jointlock thought to herself with a bit of determination and mischief growing in her spark. Well neither was she.

* * *

"Rise and shine, Screamy!"

The door to the trailer opened to reveal a blinding light and the green plated Wrecker dragged the aforementioned seeker out of the confined space he had been in for the last hour. Starscream groaned as he landed hard on his aft, looking around at the dusty canyon that he briefly remembered the second half of the Harbinger was sitting in.

"We're here," the two-wheeler standing next to him announced, looking very impatient and ready to get this over with. Rude. "Where's the ship?"

The seeker, still resetting his optics to handle the very drastic change of lighting from a dark and enclosed metal box to the open evening and cloudy sky above, slowly rolled onto his knees the best he could with cuffed wrists. Taking a quick look around, he tried to remember the landmarks he had taken account of in his processor the last time he was here and looked over at the large stone arch over to his right. If he remembered correctly, and he silently hoped he did for once, the flag ship was just on the other side of the canyon.

"It's through the arch, among the stones," he replied, lifting his bound wrists to point at the large formation of sedimentary rock behind the rest of the Autobots. Starscream sat back on his hunches, watching as the Prime seemed to think as he looked at where he had pointed. He didn't know what to think of the great Optimus Prime yet, but he silently pondered whether he would be a good leader or not. As long as the Autobots provided energon, shelter and easy to access medical assistance, the seeker would be able to tolerate living with the ground pounders he found himself playing prisoner with.

"Bulkhead, Bumblebee, you're with me," the convoy ordered his small band of merry mechs and femme. "Arcee, remain with our prisoner."

The blue femme seemed shocked for a moment, the seeker could see it become etched on her faceplates for a second before she was running after her leader as he began to walk off. Starscream sat there and watched their private conversation, not caring enough to crank up his audial sensors to full to eavesdrop on what he amused was Arcee trying to get out of being his prison guard. He didn't need to know about the femme's personal problems with him, as the seeker commander was pretty sure he had heard it all before come straight from Megatron's mouth. He didn't need anymore criticism of himself today.

Looking down at the cuffs around his wrists, he pulled at them a bit and found them to be exceedingly tighter than he imagined. He huffed, looking over his shoulder at his wings and eyeing the large clamp that had secured over them. He growled softly, trying to see if he could at least move them a slight bit and arched his back out a bit to fight the instant itch he was feeling along the broad and sensitive paneling of the extra appendages.

"Is the clamp really necessary?" he asked the two-wheeler as the Prime walked past the arch with the small scout and the lumbering Wrecker. "I promise not to flick away. It's really giving me a crick!"

The short blue femme didn't look amused when she turned around to look at him, standing servos on her hips and raising a brow in doubt that he would actually uphold his promise. "I can shove you back into the trailer," she replied with a snark attitude, giving him an ultimatum.

Starscream weighed the options that he was given and just whined in defeat, knowing that going back into the trailer wouldn't do anything to help the small itch that was starting to form on his wings. The femme rolled her optics at the whine, turning around and starting to pace as she waited for her comrades to return, leaving the seeker to his own thoughts. He sighed a bit, trying to ignore the numbness that was now spread all over his wings due to the oversized metal cuff pressing on a cluster of sensors near the root. He thought back to how he complied with the Autobots and let them bind his wings, which in retrospect was probably a bad idea, but how was he to know he would be stuffed into a humid and dark truck trailer afterwards? There was a small urge to try and break out of the clamp himself, not wanting to deal with his wings going numb and the threat of Sky Call coming to wreak havoc on his systems.

The seeker's thoughts stalled for a second as he remembered that he was enduring this all for a reason. Jointlock.

His mind traveled back to how he saw her the previous night, his stoic expression saddening a bit as he could still feel the warmth of his charge recharging under his arm and her digits twitching involuntarily against his side. It was her seventh day without flight, meaning that her back plating was going to start burning with over-sensitivity and she would be in pain for the next couple of days until the end of the punishment Megatron had forced on her. A part of him regret not fighting harder for his charge's innocence, but knew that it wouldn't have stopped the warlord from punishing Jointlock anyways, even if he had agreed to take her place. He was extra worried at the moment, since he had received multiple pings to his COMM from his charge while in the trailer on the way to the crash site, but couldn't risk the Autobots finding out or overhearing him talking to someone from the Decepticons, or he would never get the chance to side with them.

And so far, his revised plan to save himself and Jointlock from uncertain death by Megatron's servo was working out so far. His original plan hadn't consisted of him getting captured by the Autobots, but this was an opportunity to get out of the Decepticon cause without the warlord noticing or thinking anything strange about it. If he played nice with the grounders for a while, he would have earned their trust enough to allow him to rescue Jointlock and bring her with him. As far as he was concerned, the Prime had enough of a moral compass to know that leaving a sparkling on a warship alone with Megatron and Airachnid was not a safe environment and Starscream would be allowed to bring her to their base. He did silently hope that the Autobots would defeat the wretched spider right here and now, remembering what she had told him right before she ran off and ditched him back at the other half of the Harbinger.

_"When I have the weapon in hand. That is, if I can find my way back without my guide. Don't worry. I'll take care of poor little Jointlock until you return. She'll be in the good servos."_

The threat weighed heavily on his processor, knowing that Airachnid would actually make ture to her promise. He growled and cursed in Vosian under his breath making the two-wheeler stop pacing for a second to look down at him with a raised brow plate. He knew she didn't understand his home city language, no grounder did, so to her, he could have said anything and it would make him look suspicious. Starscream rolled his shoulders, playing it off as the 'wing crick' he had complained about before and gave her a fake apologetic smile. Arcee groaned, crossing her arms over her chassis and rolling her optics at him, and returned to her mindless walking. The seeker didn't know if she just hated him in general from their past encounters, or she was upset that she had to watch him, but he knew that the two-wheeler was starting to lose patience.

Starscream sat back on his heels and silently went back to observing the femme, but paused when he felt something make his spark sink. His Jointlock senses were going off. He felt his plating clamp down tight as panic started to surge through his frame, causing him to twist and look behind him at the cloudy, grey sky and open fields of canyon and rock. Usually when those senses when off, his charge was about to do something either incredibly stupid or she was in some type of danger. The seeker couldn't see anything on the horizon, but that still didn't make the intense worry he felt go away.

"What are you doing?" The voice caught him by surprise, making him jump out of his plating and looking back up at the blue femme standing in front of him.

Starscream frowned slightly, feeling like he should be warranted some trust after he willingly let the Autobots restrain him and hold him against his will when he just wanted some projection. "Just surveying the area, Autobot," he replied with a bit of a hiss. "It wouldn't be unwise of Megatron to send in reinforcements when two of his commanding officers have not reported in."

The femme gave a chortle, giving him an incredulous look. "Right. If that was the case, then he would have sent them way before now. And after that cave trip, I don't think he's so eager to get you back," she commented briefly, scanning the horizon herself for any sign that Starscream might have a point. When nothing moved in the distance, she huffed and returned to pacing.

The seeker sneered at her, wings dipping a slight bit as he was blown off, but was silently glad that there was no sign of Jointlock anywhere and chalked it up to his paranoia about the spider wretch popping up out of nowhere with this mystery weapon in hand and killing him to claim her spot indefinitely as second in command. He took a deep vent though, remembering that he had to be more courteous towards the femme if he were to ever be on her good side.

Meanwhile, Jointlock was having the best time of her life. Her Sky Call had magically disappeared the moment she left the Nemesis and she didn't waste any time doing aerial tricks and deep dives towards the organic planet before them. This was one of the times that sneaking out through the vents actually worked out pretty well and no one stopped her when she jumped off the flight deck and transformed off into the sunset. The most important thing that she had to remember was what Megatron didn't know wouldn't hurt her later. He didn't know she ever left the Nemesis and she would like to keep it that way.

It took her a couple seconds to get a lock on Starscream's position, since the scanner that she was using was mostly used for finding energon veins in the Earth's crust, so she had to upgrade it with another one of Soundwave's programs she stole off him and wait for it to calibrate. It was about five kliks from the original posting on the crash site from the datafile she recovered, which was weird since the file never mentioned it splitting in half. Jointlock briefly wondered why Starscream never listed the second pair of coordinates in the file, but included everything that he found inside the Harbinger, but soon just chalked it up to Starscream being Starscream and hiding stuff he deemed important from Soundwave.

She landed about a hundred feet from her guardian's location on the scanner, transforming and landing on top of a large canyon. The small femme looked over the edge of the canyon and squinted a bit, sliding down her goggles after a while to zoom in on what appeared to be Starscream and another femme that wasn't Airachnid. She pouted, confused that Airachnid wasn't nowhere to be seen. What happened to the spider? Did Starscream get rid of her? If so, good riddance, but he would have come back to the Nemesis if that happened. Jointlock zoomed in a little closer, pushing the optifine on the goggle lens to the max to see that her guardian was knelt on the floor, in stasis cuffs and a wing clamp, and the blue femme that he was being watched by didn't look very happy. Unfortunately from where she was standing, the other seeker couldn't see that she had arrived.

Starscream, now sitting quietly and letting his processor wander back to memories of the last couple of evenings he had, realized he now hated complete and utter silence. Jointlock wasn't the one to chatter like Knockout would about gossip, but she would pick a topic or the premise of one of the human movies she had watched and dive in head first. His charge was easily excited by things, as most sparklings of her age were, and he couldn't find it within himself to tell her to stop. He liked seeing that sparkle she got in her optics when she ranted about something she thoroughly enjoyed. But right now, shackled and grounded, the silence of the canyon was starting to eat at his wiring.

"I'm not really so bad, you know," Starscream started to make some small talk between himself and the Autobot watching him. He thought this might be a good opportunity to build some trust between himself and the femme. "Megatron, _he's_ the evil one."

"Tell it to someone who cares," Arcee sassed back as she stopped pacing again.

The seeker grimaced, trying not to think of how many times he had heard that. "Like whom? Airachnid?" he countered, and then started to make the strangling motion with his cuffed claws. "What I wouldn't do to get my servos around her wretched throat."

The blue femme gave him the smallest of smirks when he mentioned choking out the spider-themed Decepticon. "So we can agree on one thing," she said, putting a servo on her hip and listening to the seeker rant.

A small victory but a victory nonetheless, Starscream thought to himself before continuing. "Oh you have no idea," he complained, "She showed up one day, and the next thing you know, she's acting like she runs the place! She whispered lies into Megatron's ear, maneuvered to remove me of my rightful place!" The seeker really wanted to add 'she even tried to murder my charge and then got her punished for a crime she didn't commit' to the end of that rant, but refrained from saying anything about Jointlock. He didn't trust the Autobots with information about one of the only good things he still had in his life.

"Well...she terminated my partner," the femme growled, turning her helm away a bit to not look at him while mentioning it.

Anger spiked inside of Starscream's spark as he heard her mention the termination of Cliffjumper. He shouldn't have been surprised that Airachnid had stolen claim for his accomplishments, since after reviewing the hallway footage from when his charge and the spider fought, he found out that she essentially stole what Jointlock was working on to throw her under the bus in front of Megatron. He growled, squeezing his servos into fists as he thought about how many ways he was going to rip out Airachnid's spark the next time he saw her.

"What?!" he exclaimed in a fit of anger to the femme, not really thinking about what he was saying or who he was saying this to. "She's taking credit for scrapping him now too?! That was my doing!"

There was a moment of tension between the two, before Arcee gave him a confused and narrowed look. "What? You weren't there," she stated, raising a brow in confusion.

Panic started to seep in when Starscream realized what he had just said and who he just said it to. He really shouldn't have said that. "Uh, of course I wasn't," he backtracked on his previous statement, giving her a nervous smile as he tried to formulate a lie to cover up his large mistake. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"Who are you talking about?" the two-wheeler asked, pointing a digit at him and now towering over his kneeling form.

"No one," he lied instantly, trying to play innocent. "Who are _you_ talking about?"

"Tailgate."

"Um...who's Tailgate?"

There was a brief moment where Starscream could see the femme's processor putting together the broken pieces of a story he had just left slip. It only took her a moment to realize that he wasn't talking about the same partner that she was mentioning. "You were the one," she stated angrily and started stalking closer to the restrained seeker. "You extinguished Cliffjumper!"

Starscream could hear the shattering of his plan in his helm and watched as it fell into pieces before him. He looked up at the enraged femme's face and tried to back up a bit, knowing the exact expression that covered her face but usually seeing it on Megatron's and much worse implications coming afterwards. He needed to come up with something to tell her so that she didn't outright murder him, or everything he had been working on for the past four cycles would have been wasted. He couldn't allow himself to fall out of favor with the Autobots, since his and Jointlock's well beings depended on it at this point.

"Cliffjumper?!" he shrieked back, putting his servos up as Arcee brought her fist and wrist blade up to prepare to strike at him. "No no no no, you misunderstand! It wasn't like you think! The troopers mortally wounded him! I tried to help Cliffjumper, put him out of his misery! He begged me to!" He had grabbed onto Arcee's arm, begging at this point because he didn't know what else to do to stop her from whatever she was planning to do to him. And by the shocked look on her face, it made him think she actually bought it.

That was until she growled in disgust and popped her other wrist blade out, loosening the seeker's digits from her arm and kneed him in the chestplates to push him off of her. This wasn't supposed to happen, he thought to himself as he quickly picked himself up from his prone position, he was supposed to join them and rescue Jointlock from the Nemesis. He was supposed to start a new life with his charge safe from Megatron's wrath. Acree stomped down in front of Starscream, both blades out and looking ready to end his function right there and then, making yelp and curl in on himself due to fear and panic.

"Okay, okay! It was a mistake!" he screamed while trying to apologize for the murder of the femme's partner, keeping his servos in front of him as a way of defending himself. "I've made many, but I've changed! You wouldn't terminate a defenseless prisoner, who'd you?!"

Acree glared at him, seemingly taking a moment to think before clenching her servos into tight fists so tight Starscream could hear the metal of her digits creaking. "Like you didn't terminate Cliff, who was defenseless and wounded? Like you didn't terminate many other Autobot prisoners during the war that were defenseless?" she spat at him, baring her denta and snarling at the scared seeker. "You murdered him in cold energon!"

She swung at him angrily after screaming at the seeker and her wrist blade collided with his face, knocking him back again and flat out on his back. A small gash formed on Starscream's cheek from where the wrist plate stuck him, energon starting to leak from the wound. That made reality hit the seeker at full force, realizing that the femme was past mercy at this point and was being fueled by revenge. She was going to kill him and all his processor focused on was that if he died here, Jointlock would be alone on a ship where Megatron or Airachnid could rip her spark out whenever they wanted. His mind provided him with a pretty good mental image of that, hearing her screams loudly echoing in his audials

"Please, let me have my second chance! This was in the past!" he argued with her, cowering in fear and trying to make himself look smaller so maybe, just maybe, the femme would rethink her actions and allow him to continue living. "I'll pay for what I've done, whatever you and the Autobots decide to be my punishment, but please have mercy on me!"

"You don't deserve mercy, Starscream. Not after all the people you senselessly murdered during the war for your own personal gain, killing them like it is a sport." Arcee hissed at him, face contorted in hatred and anger. She whipped out her blaster, watching as Starscream gave an undignified yelp and squeezed his optics close in anticipation. She pointed the end of the barrel at the seeker's face, a fire burning behind her optics and a charge building in the blaster. "You deserve to suffer for the crimes you have committed."

A rock hit Arcee on the left side of the helm.

She stumbled, the rock that hit her a decent size and before she could even look around to see where the rock had come from, a streak of purple and bright yellow crashed into her left side at full force and flung her back a couple hundred feet. The blue femme landed face down, having tumbled over herself and skidded a bit. She groaned, feeling the ache from a large dent in her abdomen plating and bringing her servo up off of it to see that she was leaking from a gap torn open from the impact.

"Hi, Starscream!"

The seeker froze, his optics onlining at lightning speeds and scrambling to sit up. The scene in front of him had changed from a blue Autobot femme trying to get revenge for killing her partner to the small purple seeker that he was trying to protect in the first place. Jointlock was smiling at him, her optics bright with pure joy and her servos on her hips. Starscream stared at her for a second before his processor started repeating 'no' over and over again in his mind.

"Jointlock, what are you doing here?!" he yelled at her with panic in his tone and rapidly expanding field. "You aren't supposed to be here!"

"I came to rescue you!" she announced, ignoring everything else that just came out of the older seeker's mouth. Jointlock was way too proud of herself that she was actually pulling this off to care about any of the consequences of side-kicking an fully armed Autobot in the side and flinging across an open area. This would be one of the stories she would get to brag to Breakdown and Knockout about when she got back to the Nemesis later.

Arcee looked over at Starscream and saw that the blur that dented in her side was actually a small femme, who was shorter than her with purple and off-white planting. Her gaze locked on the large purple Decepticon insignia painted on her shoulder plating and the obnoxiously red optics, instantly knowing that this new femme was a con, but didn't recognize her. The Autobot's mind briefly flashed back to when Starscream had mentioned that Megatron might be sending reinforcements and began to theorize that he must have made it up so he could call for help himself. She growled, becoming enraged again. Of course Starscream didn't really want to join their cause. He just wanted information out of them.

"You backstabbing murderer..." she muttered under her breath angrily as she raised her blaster, aiming towards the small Decepticon that had just flown in and released a bolt of energy.

Both Jointlock and Starscream were still mid-conversation when they both heard the sound of a blaster firing off. Out of instinct, the two seekers ducked backwards and watched as the blue bolt of energy flew in front of their faces and singed one of the rock structures off in the distance. They both looked over and locked onto the angry blue two-wheeler that was starting to get up and had both a blaster and her wrist blades out. The enraged expression that was plastered on her face gave them both the indication that she was ready to kill both of them. Starscream could feel Jointlock's field fluctuate from feeling confident and smug to being slightly alarmed and panicked.

And that's when the seeker remembered that Jointlock had almost zero to none battlefield experience.

"Jointlock, run," he ordered of her, watching as the femme was now on her pedes and looked ready to charge at them. He looked over at his charge and saw that she was currently frozen, staring like a deer in headlights at the blue femme as she started running at them. "Jointlock, she's going to kill you! Run!"

Snapping out of whatever stupor she had gone into, Jointlock started backing and booked it to the large trailer car that was still parked by the large stone arch. If she got to a high advantage point, she would be safe, or at least safer than she was right now. Sadly, Arcee had longer legs than the small femme did and caught up to her very fast, lunging forward with her wrist blade out and swiping into the small femme's back plating. The Autobot made contact and hit the small femme she was chasing, causing Jointlock to be flung forward and hit face first into the trailer car wall with a loud bang.

"Ow," she whined, face squished against the metal of the trailer before sliding off to the ground. Landing with a thud, she had to reset her optics a couple times to make sure that she could see straight.

Starscream growled and felt deeply buried protocols online within his system when he witnessed Jointlock get thrown into the side of the trailer. His weapons system couldn't activate since the stasis cuffs wouldn't allow him to transform his servos into his blaster or fire his missiles, but he did have his claws. He glared icy daggers into the blue femme's back, slowly standing up and trying to flare his wings out even if they were bound. "Don't waste your time with her!" he shouted at Arcee, watching as she turned around to look at him. "She is not part of this argument!"

The Autobot femme bared her denta at him and immediately brought her blaster up, shooting at the seeker and hitting him square in the chestplates. No damage was done, just some scorch marks, but the force from the bolt was strong enough to knock Starscream onto his back and wings. He gasped when his wings got slightly crushed on the way back, turning to his side to avoid damaging them more and watched as Arcee sneered at him. "I'll deal with you later," she hissed in a low tone before walking over to where Jointlock was.

The small femme had already gotten back up and proceeded to climb on top of the trailer, trying to hide from the raging Autobot two-wheeler below. "You know, you're probably a really nice femme in person, but I think if we all just took a death breath then-!" A bolt of energy whizzed by her helm, cutting off Jointlock and making her duck behind the ledge of the trailer with a yelp. She peeked back over to see Arcee standing in front of the trailer. "Okay, maybe not!"

She scrambled back from the edge of the trailer as the blue femme vaulted up to the top, towering over her with blasters and blades drawn. "Stop running!" the two-wheeler yelled at the small femme, charging up her blaster. "Or did all of the Decepticons suddenly turn into cowards?"

"Hey, I take offense to that!" Jointlock countered back before having to weave around another blaster bolt.

Arcee lunged at her again, making the small seeker instinctively jump up and over her wrist blades to avoid getting sliced into. The small femme, seeing her opportuinity to escape, slid down off of the trailer and booked it over to where Starscream was currently bashing his wrist cuffs against the rocky ground to try and break them off. She had to leap off, the blue femme behind her recovering from the miss and trying to swipe at her again, only to miss again and watch as Jointlock landed pedes first on the earth and sprinted off. Growling angrily, she raised her blaster and aimed for the purple femme's back, narrowing in on the scrapped part that she caused earlier by hitting her and launching her forward.

Starscream looked up from his progress of breaking his cuffs and saw his charge running back towards him. He smiled a bit, happy that she was okay after going up against an Autobot for the first time, but it was short lived when he saw that Arcee was aiming for her back. His optics widened in panic and tried to reach out for her, yelling, "Jointlock, behind you!"

The small femme gave him a weird look before she heard the sound of a blaster firing, but didn't have time to move out of the way. The bolt's trajectory was a little off, hitting her shoulder plating instead of her back, but it was able to pierce through the ball joint and some of the wires inside. Jointlock squeaked in pain, the shriek not able to escape before she crashed forwards and collided into the rocky earth a couple feet from Starscream. She, as humans would say, ate dirt and tumbled a bit before coming to a stop and laying still as hot white pain surged through her system.

The older seeker watched this happen, feeling a bit of the pain from their shared bond, but was more in shock that the Autobot actually shot at a sparkling. He watched for a moment, hearing her whimper and watching some energon start to drip from in between her chassis and arm. Jointlock was leaking energon. Jointlock was leaking energon! He quickly flicked his optics up to look at the femme, watching as she climbed down from the trailer and was preparing to fire another bolt off. His frame felt numb, processor racing with so many thoughts and scenarios, but he knew that many of them ended with his charge being offlined. Starscream briefly saw Jointlock try to push herself up on her uninjured arm and could see Arcee aim her blaster again, but knew she was unaware of what was happening.

Primal instinct took over when he heard the blaster fire off again and he dashed for Jointlock, sliding a bit on his legs and pulling her close to his chassis as he watched the bolt of energy coast towards him. Everything reverted into slo-mo, the seeker quickly looking down at the sparkling, _his_ sparkling, in his arms and saw how dazed she was at the moment. He held onto her tight and a calm sense came over him knowing that she was going to be okay if he didn't let go of her. He was her guardian and now, he was finally accepting all of the consequences that came with that role as he looked forwards again to see the bolt was coming straight for his face.

_CRACK!_

The sickening noise caught Jointlock's attention as Starscream leaning forward and held himself up by his arms. There was the smell of burnt energon now lingering in the air as the small femme watched as a stream of energon started to pour down from her guardian's face. It pooled in front of him, ragged vents coming from him as he wheezed softly in pain and agony. She wasn't able to see his face from where she was situated under his chassis, but there was only part of a cybertronian's face that would sound like glass shattering if it was hit with a blaster bolt.

The Autobot had just shot his right optic out.

Arcee had a shocked expression on her face when she watched the seeker move at extreme speeds to jump in front of the bolt and protect the small femme she had fired at. She knew Starscream was a coward, a wimp that would never sacrifice himself for anyone or anything. So why had he done it, she thought to herself as she watched the injured seeker now stand up with a cracked optic, energon leaking down his face and an enraged and strained expression on his face.

"Now you listen to me, you wretched femme," the silvery grey seeker spat as he felt the heat and pain from his damaged optic sear into his processor. He had to tilt his helm to see her, since the vision from the right side of his face was now gone. "You may think of me as a coward, and a traitor, and a murderer, and trust me when I say that I know that I am all of those things. But unlike you and your now revenged-obsessed mind, I would never stoop so _low_ as to willingly shoot at an _innocent_ _sparkling_ on the field of battle. So, I will tell you once, and only once. You touch my charge, _my sparkling_ , ever again, and I will personally hunt you down and rip out your spark in the most painful and tedious ways that I know of! And not even the Autobots will be able to save you then. In all honesty, Arcee, from what I just witnessed, this doesn't make you any better than that spider glitch, Airachnid!"

The shocked expression was wiped off of the femme's face when she heard Starscream compare her to Airachnid, it now replaced with one to match the seeker's enraged one. She didn't hesitate to charge forward with a battle cry, running at him with wrist blades out in front of her. He was ready for her, half-blind but had his claws ready and extended out in front of him as she tackled him to the ground. The seeker caught her blades in his servos, wincing as they cut into him a bit as they were thrown backwards behind where Jointlock was now left on the ground. The two of them grappled with each other, Starscream's servos keeping Arcee's arms in place from trying to hit him.

Jointlock groaned as she landed on the floor again, hugging her injured shoulder and watching as her guardian and the Autobot femme scuffle on the ground. Her field was all over the place, filled with worry and panic for Starscream and trying to figure out a way to help him. She cried out in pain a bit when she tried to move her arm, energon still leaking from it although her self repair systems were starting to kick in. The small femme gritted her denta, trying to think of a way to get Arcee off of him and for them to get out of here in one piece. Her mind was racing until she remembered all of the stuff that she had grabbed from the workshop before she left and started digging through her subspace to find what she was looking for. She felt something circular touch her servo and pulled out the round cylinder-shaped device, not wasting any time in throwing it at the Autobot with her good arm.

The circular device flew through the air and like a magnet, slapped onto Arcee's back in between the small exterior plating that protruded from her shoulder. She yelped, leaning forwards as the impact of the device startled her and she got distracted, looking back to see that Jointlock was smirking a little too big for someone who had almost died. She reached a servo around to her back, feeling the device and blanching when she realized what had happened. The Autobot two-wheeler watched as the small purple femme popped open a panel on her forearm for a touchscreen and pressed one of the buttons on it.

The small device, small Vosian glyphs etched on the side spelling out "EMP", activated with a loud beep and the blue femme's frame went rigid. She gasped, her optics going wide and shrieking in pain before she completely collapsed and fell off of where she was on top of the grey seeker. Both seekers watched the femme as her optics offlined and the device forced her into stasis. Her digits twitched with some of the leftover charge, but the Autobot was finally unconscious and out for the count.

Starscream was panting, still in pain and leaking energon, but was too focused on his and his charge's survival to do anything else. "Jointlock, get the keycard," he called to her, scrambling away from Arcee just as a precaution. When she didn't respond, he looked up at her sharply to see that she was looking at his damaged optic. He felt a pain of sadness in his spark, but it was quickly overwritten by the need of survival. "Joint! Key! Now!" he screamed at her, getting frustrated and it turning into anger.

The small femme jumped, slowly getting up and moving her injured arm to test it before rushing over and grabbing the keycard that hung magnetically from the two-wheeler's hip. She came over to Starscream, silently slipping the card into the lock and releasing the mech from his bonds. She did the same thing for his wing clamp, watching as the clamp fall off and his wings automatically flared out in anger and aggressiveness. Jointlock dropped the keycard, backing away a bit and still holding her arm a bit as the older seeker rubbed his wrists. "S-Star?" she asked quietly, scared for him and having flashbacks from the night she found him on his hab suite flow, leaking everywhere.

"Start flying north," he ordered her, breaking back into his military voice. "I'll catch up with you once I have a moment to rest."

"But S-Star, we have to-"

"GO!" he snapped at her, snarling and scaring her so that she would move. "GO NOW!" Starscream watched her jump back in surprise, frantically looking around the area in fear before transforming into her jet alt mode. She hovered for a second before jettisoning off into the sky and flying in the direction she knew was North from her HUD. He felt her field before she flew off and she was filled with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

The older seeker sighed, watching his charge's form disappear behind dark clouds and the horizon. He stood up from where he had been seated, flapping his wings to regain feeling in them and rolling his wrists as he glanced at the unconscious femme. He reached down, pressing two digits against her neck cables and huffed out a bit of stale air when he felt energon pulsing behind the cables. He stood back up straight, bringing a digit up to his shattered and blinded optic to dip it in the rivers of energon leaking from it, watching it stain and drip down his face.

_"You don't deserve mercy, Starscream. Not after all the people you senselessly murdered during the war for your own personal gain, killing them like it is a sport. You deserve to suffer for the crimes you have committed."_

He shuddered a bit as he heard Arcee's angry words echo around inside of his helm. She was right, well, mostly right. He had killed many during the war, some of his own personal gain, but most of them were out of his own need for survival. It was war, he thought to himself, mechs and femmes die all the time. But, deep down in his spark, he understood where she was coming from. He had lost so many of his people, and those who had meant so much to him. And now, he was just a murderer in everyone else's optics and a coward for letting it happen. Starscream growled, but let his anger go as he turned to transform and fly after his charge with a shattered optic and a new resolve.

He was going to leave this war. He had planned to defect, but now witnessing the dangers that anyone could cause for himself and his...his sparkling, he would not allow himself or Jointlock to be aligned with anyone. He was Starscream, aligned to no side, servant to no one, and guardian of the one and only member of the last generation.


	4. Throwing Fuel into the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath, featuring the Autobots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I've been gone for a while. Summer hit me really hard, but I finally broke through that stupid writer's block and I now bring you all a new chapter, extra long with an extra helping of drama. 
> 
> I don't know how consistent my update schedule will be, as the school year is starting, but who knows what that's even gonna look like. Hope you all enjoy!

In all honesty, Bumblebee didn’t mean to forget about Arcee. A lot of stuff had happened and it had just slipped his processor that he had left her alone, with Starscream, in the middle of the desert without any backup. She was a strong femme, so there wasn’t anything to really worry about., but the fact that she hadn’t called in the entire time they were back at base was fairly concerning.

See what had happened was after Bumblebee had fought Airachnid and she had run off, the first thing that was on his processor was to get Optimus and Bulkhead back to base with the broken pieces of the Immobilizer so that Ratchet could fix them and get them un-immobilized. Perfectly reasonable train of thought there. He commed the medic, a groundbridge opened, and himself and Ratchet dragged both Bulkhead and Prime through the vortex without a second thought. Bee had originally thought that fixing the Immobilizer would take longer, but Ratchet explained it to only be a simple break and was able to release Bulk and Optimus from their frozen prisons. 

Everything was great, no one was permanently damaged and although Airachnid got away, they now had an experimental stick that could freeze people. The humans were getting ready to go home, and Bee was able to transform and drop Raf off at his house when the fatal question came.

“Hey, guys? Uh, where’s Arcee?”

It was Jack who asked that, which was perfectly warranted since she was his ride home from base. It took a second for Bumblebee to process what had been asked before realizing that Arcee hadn’t commed back to base yet and she was still out there watching Starscream. Everyone seemed to realize when it was voiced that they hadn’t heard anything from the motorbike for the last half an hour. The most worrisome part of the situation is that she was alone with Starscream, plus Optimus’s trailer. There was a very large amount of doubt that the seeker actually wanted to join them and the fact that the bot watching him hadn’t reported in yet clearly meant one of three things: offline, unconscious, or occupied. Bee really hoped it was the last option.

A couple moments later, Bee was back at the Harbinger crash site with Bulkhead searching for the femme. The scout immediately made his way back to where the trailer was with Bulk tailing behind, both having their weapons drawn in case Starscream had escaped or Airachnid had come back for round two. Bumblebee took lead, rounding the corners of the canyon while scanning the area for any signs of danger. He was the scout for a reason. The thing that was worrying him so much though was as they got closer and closer to where they had left the trailer, it was dead silent. Bee looked back at Bulk and they both shared the same look of increasing concern before pushing towards where the stone arch was.

It didn’t take them long to find Arcee. As soon as they walked through the archway, Bumblebee and Bulkhead spotted the blue femme sprawled out on the ground a couple meters away from their position. There were scorch marks from blaster shots burnt into the sides of nearby rock structures. Scratches were gouged into the ground and there was a decent sized dent in the side of the trailer, like someone had been thrown into it. There had clearly been a struggle, and someone hadn’t gotten away unscathed. Most obvious sign was the small pool of energon that sat a couple feet away from Arcee, it partially dried up and small shards of glass were laying in the lifeblood. At this point in time, neither of them knew if the energon was Arcee’s or Starscream’s.

Back at the Autobot Outpost, Ratchet was waiting very impatiently for Bulkhead and Bumblebee to respond and report on what they had found. After Bulkhead and Bumblebee had left, Optimus had ordered for the children to be sent home, which the older mech was more than pleased to do so. The old medic was still standing at the terminal with a concerned and stern look across his face, watching the life signatures on the screen as their COMM frequency stayed completely silent. For the most part, he was more upset with the lot of them for not telling him that they were harboring Starscream as a prisoner back when they originally made the decision, as he thought he could personally say a lot on the matter and warn all of them on how this was a horrible idea. Starscream was…well, Starscream. From what was reported from Arcee and Bulkhead after coming back from their excursion in a collapsed mine, which don’t even get him started on how much he internally panicked over that, even Megatron wasn’t giving the seeker anymore chances. Even if Starscream did want to join their cause, there was half a doubt in the medic’s processor that the mech would just go crawling back to Megatron the first chance he got.

A servo came down on his shoulder, making Ratchet jump for a second before looking around to see Prime standing behind him. “Do not worry, old friend,” he reassured the medic. “Arcee is one of our strongest. I am sure that whatever has happened, she would be able to handle it, whether Starscream or something else was the cause.”

“It’s beyond me why you thought that trusting Starscream was a good idea in the first place, Optimus,” the medic replied back with a bit of his usual bite in his voice. “We all know him to manipulate others to get what he wants. What was stopping him from doing the same from Arcee, to all of us? What if his goal was to locate our base and report it back to Megatron, or kill us in our berths as soon as he got the chance? There had to have been some ulterior motive.”

Optimus narrowed his brow in thought as he listened to Ratchet. He knew that everything that he had mentioned could have been a possibility, as the seeker was well known for his more deceitful tactics. It could have been a trap and Starscream was using his capture as an opportunity to learn of their base’s location or any other useful information. But there was something different about the way that Starscream had spoken when asking to join them, something that Optimus couldn’t place as ‘normal Starscream rhetoric’.

“ _ I’ll tell you anything you want to know…I want to be on your side…Wouldn't I? What have they done for me lately besides humiliate me, spy on me, demote me? Megatron tried to extinguish my spark in cold blood, as well as threatening my cha-…my, um, my well-being! And then, he all but replaced me with that traitorous wretch, Airachnid. She abandoned me, left me for scrap! So, why not rat them out? _ ”

For a brief couple of seconds, he could see desperation in the seeker’s optics. It was well hidden underneath the anger and hatred, but in that moment, he saw a mech, for reasons unknown to him, begging for an escape and this was his last resort. The mech was on his knees, surrounded by the enemies and yet, he was complying to their demands without the usual spite he held for them. The anger he showed was focused towards the Decepticons and while he spoke ill of his own faction, his optics were frantically glancing up at them. He only misspoke once in his rant, seemingly about to say something before biting his glossa and stuttering through the rest of his sentence and moving on. That’s when he saw that look of desperation and fear in his optics that Starscream was so determined to hide rear its head.

Optimus didn’t understand why this stood out to him so much, but it made him agree to allow Starscream a chance at redemption. Maybe it was the fact that he had only seen desperation like that in those who had suffered a great deal and he was willing to be the one to give Starscream a second chance and become a better individual, or maybe he thought it could be an opportunity to gain intel and an ally from the enemy faction, but there was a silent plead for help coming from the seeker and Optimus couldn’t find himself able to ignore it. The Matrix seemed to thrum behind his chestplates as if to tell him that accepting Starscream into the Autobots was the right course of action.

“I cannot say for certain, Ratchet, but I do not believe that Starscream had any ill intentions in asking to join our cause,” Optimus finally replied after coming out of his deep train of thought. “Something had happened to cause a change of spark and I was willing to give him the chance to redeem himself and start anew among us.”

Ratchet shot a look of disbelief and shock at the Prime. “Redeem himself!? Forgive me, Optimus, but you cannot be serious! This is Starscream we are talking about, not some wayward neutral who stumbled in from across the galaxy!”

The Autobot commander could understand where his medic was coming from, as the seeker in question had been a leading force in the Decepticon cause for as long as the war had been running its course. He and his armada had caused the deaths of thousands among the Autobot ranks and was one of Megatron’s most cunning officers. But, Optimus was not one to break his own beliefs and deny someone help if they truly needed it. Deep in his spark, he knew that his Autobots did not share the same sentiments as he did, but he could only hope for his team to look past their prejudices and allow for someone less favorable to join their faction for the better.

“All sentient beings have the capacity to change and deserve a chance of redemption,” the Prime retorted sternly, “even if their past actions towards us were to cause harm and destruction. We must not jump to conclusions before knowing the whole story.”

“And what if the conclusion is that Starscream attacked Arcee as a means to escape? For all we know, he could be waiting to ambush them,” the old medic argued, gesturing back to the terminal screen. Arcee’s vitals were pulled up, but all of the readings were blank, as if someone had disconnected the sensors inside of her plating. They had yet to hear back from either Bulkhead and Bumblebee and Ratchet starting to hate being in the dark during these types of situations. It made him nervous. “I just don’t know, Optimus. Even if Arcee is fine and they apprehend Starscream to bring him back to base, do you just expect us to treat him like an ally and nothing he’s done ever happened?”

The Prime’s stoic expression morphed slightly as he felt some internal conflict. He hoped that the seeker would have taken the offer of a new start to spark, but he knew that opportunities like this could always be too good to be true. “It will take time for trust to be built between us, but I am hopeful that Starscream will become a valuable asset to our team as time moves on,” Optimus explained. “As of now, he is still our prisoner and if he has caused harm to Arcee or the others, he will still have to deal with the consequences that come with assaulting another mecha.”

::Um, Bulkhead to base.::

Both mechs broke off their conversation and looked up at the terminal monitor to see that Bulkhead’s COMM frequency had lit up as the Wrecker reported in. Ratchet gave an exasperated sigh as well as muttering, ‘fragging finally’, under his breath before turning towards the screen.

“Yes, Bulkhead?” the medic asked, relieved to finally be hearing back from somebody. “Have you located Arcee or Starscream?”

::Yeah, we found Arcee, but it’s bad, Ratch. She’s got a huge dent in her side and it’s leaking. Bee and I have been trying to wake her up, but it looks like she’s in stasis lock or something,:: Bulkhead replied, sounding worried for his teammate’s well being. ::As for Screamer, it looks like the two of them duked it out before he hightailed it out of here. Should we go after him?::

The medic looked back at Optimus’s face for his take on the situation to see a slight frown of disappointment forming. It lasted for a brief moment before disappearing into the normal stoic expression the Autobot commander always wore. “No, Bulkhead,” he ordered, “Our top priority is to see to Arcee’s condition. Return to base. We will have to apprehend him at a later time. Ratchet will send a groundbridge to your location.”

::Alright, Prime. Over and out,:: Bulkhead signed off and the line went dead.

Ratchet didn’t waste any time on opening a groundbridge for the others, typing in the coordinates that were being calculated from Bumblebee and Bulkhead’s energy signatures. After activating the bridge, he walked over towards the medbay and started preparing it for whatever injuries Arcee may have other than what Bulk described. Stasis lock was the most serious, as usually one falls into stasis after immense trauma to the helm or critically low levels of energon. Anything could have happened out there and none of them were there to witness it. Optimus made sure to back away from the medbay area, allowing the medic to work and observing the lines of worry on his old friend’s face.

It took a couple seconds before the green swirl of the groundbridge opened up on the far side of the room, both mechs looking over and watching for the others to come through. The first to come through was Bumblebee, who was holding Arcee upright next to him with her arm draped over his shoulders. His servo was clamped over her side, keeping her upright and seemingly applying pressure to the wound she had on her side. The scout immediately brought Arcee over to Ratchet, who was setting up an IV of energon and spreading out his tool set on a surgical cart. Bulkhead came in after him, dragging Prime’s trailer behind him and setting it down in the corner of the foyer for the moment. Bee ran back over to the groundbridge controls and shut off the vortex before all of them brought their focus onto their teammate’s condition.

The room filled with tension as the old medic started to work, their fields taught with concern. Ratchet manually opened the medical port on the femme’s arm, plugging in his medical scanner so he could get a complete set of information on the damage done to her frame externally and internally. He then hooked Arcee up to the IV, making sure that she was getting enough energon to replace what she was losing from her leaking side. He shifted over to the damage on her side next, internally wincing at the sight of the dented plating and small gashes in between the folds. As Miko would comment at a time like this, it looked like crumpled up aluminum foil. Ratchet skillfully switched to smoothing out the plating and sealing up the open tears with his welder while he waited for the medical scan to give him a report.

:: _ Is she gonna be okay, Ratchet? _ :: he heard Bumblebee ask while looking over his shoulder, making him jump a bit. The old mech grimaced slightly, wanting to swat at the young mech, but decided not to in favor of tending to Arcee. He knew Bee was just worried about her. :: _ That dent looks really bad. _ ::

“Yeah, it reminds me of those trucks after monster truck rallies that Miko and I watched last week,” Bulkhead brought up with a light chuckle, coming up behind Bee to watch. Everyone turned to give him a confused and incredulous look for a second before the Wrecker realized what he actually said and what it implied. “Oh, um, sorry. Not helping. Got it.”

Ratchet gave a very pained sigh in return as he checked over the wound before covering it with a patch of mesh and backing away for a second. “I’ve managed to weld shut the tears and smooth the plating back into place, but nothing about this makes reasonable sense,” he commented, rubbing a servo down the side of his face and watching the medical scanner for Arcee’s readout.

“What do you mean by that, old friend?” Optimus asked with arms crossed over his chestplates in thought.

“There is no way that the dent was the cause of the stasis lock,” the old medic explained. “The tears weren’t big and there are no major energon lines or systems disrupted from what I can tell, meaning that her energon levels should be fine. I don’t even understand how Starscream could have pulled off making a dent like this. The last time I saw a dent like this, a mech about her size had been rammed into by a Decepticon about the size of Bulkhead, maybe bigger. Even if he had gotten a running start and swung into her side with cuffed servos, he wouldn’t have enough force behind the blow to make any significant damage with.”

“Um, about that, Ratchet,” Bulkhead spoke up after Ratchet finished speaking, pulling the cuffs and wing clamp he found at the scene out from his subspace and putting them down on one of the workbenches. “It looks like he might have gotten out of his cuffs beforehand. There’s no way that ‘Cee would have just let him out, right?”

The medic left Arcee’s side for a moment to inspect the restraints. There was dried energon staining the cuffs. It was flaking off at this point and the keycard was still jammed into the wing clamp lock. Besides that, no other damage was done to the cuffs or the wing clamp. There was no physical way that Starscream would have been able to take the wing clamp off by himself without smashing it, as the lock would have been behind his helm between his shoulders. It perplexed Ratchet, making him narrow his optics suspiciously at the cuffs before hearing the ping of the completed medical scan go off and it drew him away.

“We do not know what had transpired before we had arrived,” Optimus reasoned, catching everyone else’s attention for a brief moment as the Prime observed their downed teammate, “but it is safe to assume that Starscream may have tried to persuade Arcee to remove his cuffs as a means to escape.”

Bee tilted his helm in confusion. :: _ But why? What was the point of him doing all that? _ :: the scout asked with questions swarming around his processor as he tried to see logic in Starscream running away.

“Whaddya mean, Bee?” Bulk asked, looking down at the smaller mech next to him with a hint of confusion.

:: _ I mean, he made that whole planned speech and everything to convince us to take him with us and not leave him back of the first half of the Harbinger, _ :: Bee continued, :: _ He didn’t even fight me when I put the cuffs and wing clamp on, or when Bulkhead shoved him in the back of the trailer. Why allow himself to be captured only to pick a fight with Arcee the moment we leave and then run away? _ ::

“Well, maybe he thought that ‘playing nice’ would save his own plating in the moment and drop our guard enough to allow him into base. And then, when we’re all signing ‘when all are one’, he just stabs us in the back,” the Wrecker suggested, crossing his arms over his chassis. “He’s basically done the same thing to Ol’ Buckethead for all these years, so why stop with us?”

Optimus didn’t know what to think of Bulkhead’s opinion. For one, they all knew Starscream was known for his constant attempts to usurp Megatron from his position of leader of the Decepticons, the most recent one seeming to end in failure from what they witnessed at Skyquake’s grave. All of the dented and scratched plating still made Optimus under what really happened after the day in Antarctica. It would also not be unlike Starscream to do the same here, the Prime already sensing that were was an ulterior motive to Starscream begging to join their ranks, but he couldn’t find sense in the seeker putting so much effort to have gained their trust only to throw it away in favor of falling back to the Decepticon cause.

:: _ Optimus? _ :: The Prime faded out of his thoughts again to look down at Bumblebee. The scout looked uneasy, his large blue optics flickering in thought as he seemed to be going over previous events in his mind. :: _ Bulk has a good point, but something just…feels wrong? I was watching Starscream while he spoke and he kinda looked scared and, and- _ ::

“Desperate?” Optimus finished the mech’s sentence.

:: _ Yeah, _ :: Bee buzzed in agreement.

So, he wasn’t the only one who noticed Starscream’s offset behavior. Optimus gently rested a servo on the young scout’s shoulder and sighed heavily. “I, myself, am not sure why Starscream acted in such a way, but I couldn’t find myself able to deny him a second chance. War does many things to different mechs, and it looks as if Starscream has finally reached his breaking point.”

:: _ …do you really think that Starscream would have changed? After all those vorns of being a Decepticon and under Megatron’s reign? _ ::

The Prime took a moment and looked back at the trailer, feeling Bumblebee’s field gently prod against his own for an answer or emotion. Memories of the seeker in question flickering in front of his optics, ones from on Cybertron and off, and then today’s. “I believe,” Optimus finally responded, “that with enough time and effort, Starscream could have become a valued member of our team. But unfortunately, recent events might prevent that opportunity to-”

“By the Allspark!”

Both Optimus and Bee looked over towards the medbay after hearing the medic curse loudly and watched as he frantically reread the scan results in his processor. “Ratchet?” Prime asked, concern lacing his field as he and the others approached further into the medbay.

“Her entire sensor net is fired!” the old medic continued, checking over the downed femme’s frame as he ranted to the surrounding mechs. “There’s an electrical current surging through Arcee’s frame that knocked her processor offline. While her internal systems are still operational at the moment, I don’t know for how long that will last. Stasis lock activated because of the unsafe amount of charge flowing through her neural net and onlining would cause her sensor net to go into overdrive and could fry her out completely!”

Everyone winced a bit with concern and dread, even Prime, although it was less noticeable. Losing Arcee would put a heavy toll on all of them, as their team was so small already. She was an essential player to their team as well, her small stature and speed helping them with scouting and close combat battle, as well as everyone being severely emotionally attached to each other. It would be especially hard on Jack, who would probably be heartbroken if he found out she had offlined while he was at home. It was too soon after Cliffjumper’s passing to lose another teammate.

:: _ Well… you can bring her out of it, right Ratchet? There’s gotta be a way to wake her up without electrocuting her, _ :: Bee warbled nervously, wringing his servos as he looked over at Arcee’s unconscious frame laid out on the berth.

Ratchet followed Bumblebee’s line of sight to the femme and hesitated to say anything at first. The charge was still flowing throughout her frame, which meant there was a very high chance that her frame would short itself out before he would be able to do anything about it. He clenched his servos, not looking at any of them as he flashed back to the last time he made a promise he couldn’t own up to. He shook those thoughts from his processor and refocused as this wasn’t a voice box on the line, but Arcee’s life. And he was the Autobots’ medic, so how was he supposed to say no and let his worries get the best of him.

“I… if we find out where the charge is localizing, then we should be able to discharge it from there and slowly bring her out of stasis,” the medic finally replied, rubbing his chin in thought and looking over at Optimus. Any sign of reinforcement from the Prime always made him feel better about the situation that the Team constantly got themselves into. “But, we have to do so quickly. Bulkhead, help me flip her onto her back. Getting access to her spinal strut will aid in expelling the charge easier.”

“You got it, Ratch,” the green Wrecker replied as he walked over and helped to shift Arcee onto her front while Ratchet began to get some tools set up on the trolley.

Bumblebee moved closer to watch, his field filled with immense worry for the femme as this all went down before him. He could tell that Ratchet was nervous, even though the old mech would probably never admit to it. He was the same way when Optimus got infected with the Cybonic Plague and all those vorns ago when the scout was found after the Battle of Tyger Pax. And Bee always saw Arcee as more of a sister in arms than anything else, he realized over some period of time. He didn’t want to lose her, but he trusted Ratchet would have a handle on fixing her no matter what was the aliment.

And that’s when he saw it. 

The scout was studying Arcee’s back when he noticed a small puck sized disc stuck in between where her winglets sat out of her shoulder joints. He squinted at it, it having some kind of inscription on the side, but couldn’t read the glyphs. He moved a bit closer while Ratchet was still setting up and bent down to look at it, noticing that it was humming somewhat, like it was alive.

:: _ Um…Ratchet? _ :: he asked out loud, tilting his helm in curiosity as he stared at the disc.

He heard a disgruntled sigh in return, the one most received when the old mech was busy. “Bumblebee, whatever it is, can it wait until after I’m-”

:: _ What’s that? _ ::

The scout didn’t give Ratchet time to finish his sentence before trying to reach out and touch whatever was stuck to Arcee’s back. The medic only had a few moments before realizing what Bumblebee was pointing to and his optics going wide. “Bumblebee, don’t touch that!” he yelled, trying to stop him from getting too close to the unknown object.

But it was too late. Bee’s digit got within a couple inches of the device before a crack rang throughout the medbay and an arch of electricity launched from the disc. The scout recoiled hard, a shriek of a buzz coming out from his vocalizer as the zap burned through his digit and servo for a couple seconds. He shook his servo in pain, all feeling gone from it and it leaving behind a tingly sensation up his arm. The smell of ozone wafted in the air around him and the unconscious femme on the medical berth.

“Uh, doc?” Bulk asked, looking back and forth between the object on Arcee’s back and Ratchet.

The medic slowly walked over and bent over to look at the disc, trying to read the glyphs himself before realizing it wasn’t in Iaconian. He narrowed his optics, turning up his audials a bit to hear the humming from the device. A telltale sign of electricity being generated. “The charge is coming from the device,” he pointed out to the others, “but it’s somehow generating its own electrical grid, so the charge is supposed to last for a while.”

Bee recovered fairly quickly from being electrocuted and tilted his helm in curiosity. :: _ So we just turn it off and she goes back to normal? _ ::

“Why don’t we just pull it off?” Bulkhead questioned back, making a yanking motion with his servo. “I can withstand a couple shocks.”

“Ep, ep, ep, don’t be so reckless!” Ratchet countered both of them, grabbing the tool he was working on setting up before. “Both of you, hold her up in a sitting position on the berth. I’m going to discharge the device very carefully and hopefully, her frame will recognize that the charge is gone and bring her out of stasis.”

The scout and the Wrecker shared a look with each other before flipping Arcee back over and lifting her into a sitting position, holding her arms for stability. Ratchet came up behind and pressed the tool he was holding to the disc. It turned on, sucking the charge from the disc for a good minute before emptying the device off all of the electricity that was being harbored inside. The medic pulled away and waited carefully, not knowing what to expect when the device finally turned off. Everyone held in whatever air was taken in by their vents, hoping that everything was going to be fine.

The disc, once drained completely, popped off of Arcee’s back and fell to the ground with a loud  _ clang _ . Time seemed to slow for a second as once the device was gone from her back, everyone was waiting for something to happen. 

Two blue optics came back online as Arcee came out of stasis, them bright with the same intensity she had before being knocked offline. Her arm blade popped out, causing Bulkhead and Bee to let go of her arms, but didn’t get far enough away before she yelled out a battle cry and knocked both of them to the ground. She stood up on the berth in a defensive position, panting heavily and frantically looking around herself to try and figure out where in the name of Primus she was.

“At ease, Arcee,” Optimus called out calmly, walking over and gently placing a servo on her shoulder. His field was calm against the femme’s erratic one, her flinching when he came close to her. “You are back at base. Starscream is gone.”

Arcee seemed to sink back into reality after that, frame breaking its defensive stance and field smoothing out as she looked around. Bulkhead and Bumblebee finally sat up from being knocked prone to the floor, groaning from the amount of force they had been hit with. She winced softly, feeling bad for attacking them out of the blue like that. For all she knew, she was still back at the trailer with Starscream and the mech had jumped her.

Her optics went wide with shock when she finally registered what Prime had said. “Wait, gone? You mean he got away?!” she cried out, her expression going from shocked to enraged. “I…I had him right where I wanted him! But of course, the fragger got away from me at the last possible second!”

Her legs wobbled underneath her, unstable from being in stasis lock and the unbridled rage burning throughout her frame. Both Ratchet and Optimus had to catch her before she collapsed forwards off the medical berth. Arcee’s optics burned when the same brightness that they had before being thrown into stasis. She couldn’t believe that she had let Starscream have an opportunity to get away. She should have had her guard up more and watched that little-

“Whoa, ‘Cee, it’s alright. We’ll get Screamer some other time,” Bulk promised, interrupting the femme’s thought process.

She reeled on the taller mech, baring an angry, yet hurt expression. “No, you don’t understand! He was-!” The words got stuck in her voice box as emotions crept up into her voice, ones she was trying to force down.

“…he was the one who killed Cliffjumper.”

The base went silent as those words rang out across the main room. Four pairs of wide blue optics trained on the femme as she stared at the ground in front of her pedes, all of them now filled with shock. The pain from losing her second partner was still fresh in her spark and fresh in the sparks of everyone else in base. It had been the first Autobot casualty in many Earth years and it brought a harsh reminder to them all that there was still a war going on outside the confines of base. 

Bulkhead was the first to break the silence, suddenly letting loose a guttural growl and slammed his fist against the metal catwalk next to him, denting it inwards and nearly missing the terminal next to him. “I knew it!” he cried out in anger, “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him!”

Ratchet sighed heavily, shaking his helm as he looked to Optimus. “And to think we almost let him into base,” the old mech commented bitterly while locking optics with his leader, “our home.”

Bumblebee jumped when the Wrecker’s fist collided with the metal platform, still in shock from the news they just received. He looked over to Arcee, who was still sitting in silence on the medical berth and holding her newly welded side. The scout shuffled over, resting his servo on her shoulder and feeling a glimpse of the emotional turmoil that her tightly knit field was giving off. He let out an uneasy warble, finding it was the only thing he could think to do while he sat there with Arcee.

Optimus finally approached her, feeling a twinge of guilt within himself as he was the one that suggested bringing Starscream into their faction in the first place. He too, rested a servo on her shoulder as an attempt to console his soldier. “Arcee, I know you are still processing this new information, but we are still in the dark on how this all happened,” he stated, referring to the battle that supposedly occurred. “I find it unlikely that Starscream would willingly share that with you.”

The femme slowly looked up, brows furrowed in thought as Arcee had to reset her voice box a couple times before trusting herself to speak. “He let it slip,” she explained, arms coming to cross over her chassis. “He was complaining about Airachnid when I told him about how she murdered my partner. I didn’t specifically say who I was talking about, so the aft thought I was talking about Cliff. I put the pieces together from there.”

“And, what, he just bragged about killing him in front of you?” Bulkhead piped up.

Acree scoffed in disgust. “Not even that. He tried to make me think that he did it out of mercy. Out of mercy! Like I was going to believe that scrap!”

“And what were you planning to do with Starscream once you found out this information?” Optimus had a feeling on where this was going. He had seen that rage in her optics before, when Arcee had gone after Airachnid back at the buried half of the Harbinger. He knew that her need for closure would cloud her better judgement, which now seemed to be the case with their escaped prisoner.

“I was going to…” Arcee began to say, but soon noticed the light look of disappointment in Prime’s optics. She took a deep sigh and started to glare at the floor again. “I was going to take revenge on Starscream for Cliffjumper.”

“By fatally wounding him, or even killing him.” Optimus finished what she didn’t elaborate on. “He was a defenseless mech, a prisoner, and you took advantage of that.”

“Oh, not like the Decepticons don’t do the same exact thing to their prisoners!”

“Which is exactly what separates us from the Decepticons, Arcee!”

Optimus was now standing at his full height again, face growing stern and posture rigid. He rarely raised his voice at his team, but he was now trying to get a point across to Arcee, but everyone else as well. “Whereas the Decepticons would not hesitate to harm someone unarmed or subdued, we must not let our anger fuel our choices and lead us down that same path. Even if that someone has hurt us in the past. I know you are still mourning the loss of your last partner, but sometimes it is better if one takes the moral high road and lets those emotions go.”

Arcee was silent and still wouldn’t make eye contact with Prime, optics burning an imaginary hole in the ground while she was being lectured. In her processor, she knew that he was right and that trying to murder Starscream probably wasn’t the best of ideas, but her spark said differently. She wanted closure, just like how she wanted to get revenge on Airachnid for Tailgate. Cliffjumper would have wanted her to get revenge for his death, right? Right?

“He wasn’t defenseless,” she gritted through her denta. “He called for backup.”

Bumblebee raised a brow in confusion. :: _ But wouldn’t you have heard him doing that? We didn’t hear any jets flying over head when fighting Airachnid either. _ ::

“He probably did it when he was in the trailer,” Arcee hypothesized. “I saw him freak out while we were waiting, looking back towards the canyons. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me that Megatron might have sent reinforcements for him. I didn’t believe him at first, since he and Megatron didn’t seem too happy with each other back at the cave, but I was proved wrong when that…that little  _ gremlin _ showed up!”

Everyone gave a wide-eyed look at Arcee when she suddenly got aggressive again. :: _ ‘Little gremlin’? _ :: Bee repeated.

“Apparently, Airachnid isn’t the only new Decepticon in their ranks,” she added, fuming internally. “I’ve never seen them before, but they came out of nowhere at high speed and dive-bombed my side. It knocked me back and ripped open my side plating. They were also the only who threw that disc thing at me when I had my back turned.”

“Hard to believe that Screamer has a friend,” Bulkhead commented, saying out loud what both him and mostly everyone else had been thinking. “I mean, have you heard how he talks to the other cons?”

“Oh, puh-lease! If anything, they probably have some mutual agreement to not offline each other,” Ratchet countered, rolling his optics. He walked over to the terminal and typed in some commands. If this new Decepticons was listed in the archived data banks from before the war, they should have no problem identifying them and seeing who they were dealing with.

He turned to face Arcee, digits hovering over the keypad. “Do you remember what they looked like? They might be recorded in the records.”

The blue femme placed her helm in her servos as he concentrated hard on the fight. Because of the stasis lock, her memories of beforehand were blurry and unfocused. It was probably because she was seeing red the entire time and wasn’t really focusing on appearances. It took a moment, but she finally was able to remember seeing a blur of something hitting her side as he got flung back and some voices screaming at each other in the distance.

“Um…they were dark purple and a yellowish off-white color,” Arcee rumbled off, trying to list what came to mind. “Red optics, maybe a flying alt mode of some sort. They didn’t have any treads or tires. They were shorter than me, maybe by a helm, I couldn’t really tell. Screamer and them were yelling at each other after they landed and they sounded like one of those cartoon characters that Miko watches with the high-pitched voices.”

Ratchet typed in some keywords while Arcee was listing off characteristics, rolling his optics at the more unusual ones. He finished off the list and entered the search, waiting for the computer system to mill through off of the Decepticon files they had stored so far. The old mech sometimes wished Prowl was there, as he probably could have pulled up the file in an instant and they would have to wait for the jumbled mess of the archives to sort through everything.

**[Search complete: 0 matches found]**

The medic’s optics went wide. “That can’t be right,” he mumbled out loud to himself. He re-entered all of the information again, only to get the same result of no matches as last time. “They’re nothing!”

“Nothing?” Bulkhead asked over his shoulder. “There can’t be nothing, right? Everyone who is still alive and fighting in the war were made during the Golden Age or before. Well, minus Bee.”

The young scout’s helm shot up and gave an offended warble towards Bulk, crossing his arms over his chestplates and pouting. Ratchet only rolled his optics at this, silently mumbling about how much of a sparkling Bumblebee was being and it only proved Bulkhead’s point. He looked back towards Arcee, who was also as confused as the old mech.

“Bulkhead brings up a reasonable point.” Prime suddenly spoke up, drawing everyone else’s attention and all with various reactions.

“He does?” Ratchet and Arcee asked, narrowing their brows in to looks of disbelief.

“I do?” Bulk repeated, surprised with himself and also a bit in disbelief. “Uh, what exactly did I do?”

Optimus hummed in agreement. “Our archives only have records of mechs and femmes who have fought in the war that were created before the War had started. It is possible that the Decepticon that appeared was created right before or after the War had already begun. Therefore, they do not have any records in the Autobot database to match their description.”

Ratchet leaned over and grabbed the disc that was stuck to Arcee’s back off the floor, inspecting the device a lot closer now. There was a part of him that really wanted to take it apart and figure out how it worked, being that the device was so intricate and study for something about the size of his palm, being a scientist himself. Any additional tech to their arsenal helped them out immensely.

“Whoever they are, they must be a scientist or engineer of some sort,” he said out loud. “I’ve never seen an electromagnetic pulse generator used in this matter before.”

“Wait,” Bulkhead butted back in, “There’s no way that a con was made that small. Two-wheelers, no offense Arcee, are small enough as they come. And I’ve never seen a con, let alone any cybertronian, made smaller than a two-wheeler.”

:: _ Maybe they were a minicon? _ :: Bee suggested.

“A minicon?”

:: _ Yeah, the Decepticons used to use them as spy drones. They would be smaller than Arcee and probably have combat training. I think I remember reading a file about Soundwave having like, a bunch of them. Maybe he sent one after Starscream? _ ::

Arcee had been quiet for a while now, her helm still in her servos. All of the conversation around her slowly muted out as She was trying to clear up all of the fuzzy memories of the battle and what actually happened. Everything in the moment had been blurred by blinding rage and hatred for the mech who murdered her last partner that she hadn’t been keeping track of the events. She felt as if she was forgetting something about this new Decepticon who showed up, something important. Starscream seemed to recognize them, since they had an argument, but there was something more. She groaned softly, rubbing her palms into her optics as she tried to remember.

_ “Now you listen to me, you wretched femme. You may think of me as a coward, and a traitor, and a murderer, and trust me when I say that I know that I am all of those things. But unlike you and your now revenged-obsessed mind, I would never stoop so low as to willingly shoot at an  _ **_innocent sparkling_ ** _ on the field of battle. So, I will tell you once, and only once. You touch my charge, my  _ **_sparkling_ ** _ , ever again, and I will personally hunt you down and rip out your spark in the most painful and tedious ways that I know of!” _

Arcee’s helm shot up as her processor finally recalled what Starscream had yelled at her. She didn’t hear it the first time, too “revenge-obsessed” as the seeker had said, but now multiple things donned on her that started to make sense and dread started to fill her chassis.

_ “ _ … _ willingly shoot at an  _ **_innocent sparkling_ ** _ …You touch my charge, my  _ **_sparkling_ ** _ …” _

“It was a sparkling,” she muttered to herself, too in shock to say anything else or hold her glossa as she said, it barely audible to anyone else.

Bumblebee looked over at Arcee when he heard a mumble of words and noticed the terrified look on her face. Raising a brow, he gently shook her shoulder, causing her to flinch and look up at the young scout next to her. :: _ What did you say? _ :: he asked, a look of concern spreading over his face.

“The new con,” she said as her voice quivered a bit, “it…they were a sparkling.”

No one said anything, just staring at Arcee with either the same terrified and shocked look that Arcee was showing, or agape mouths. Bumblebee and Bulkhead just stared at her, not sure if they heard Arcee correctly. Ratchet and Optimus, on the other hand, looked a mix of concern and bewildered by this information, as neither of them had heard mention of a sparkling since before the war started.

“How do you know this, Arcee?” Optimus asked, taking the situation seriously now that a sparkling was involved in all of this.

“He…Starscream said so after I…” She couldn’t finish her sentence as her overwhelming hatred for Cliffjumper’s killer was being smothered by the amount of guilt starting to build up. “I should have realized when they showed up and were talking to him, when they didn’t fight back. They just ran from me, and I was so angry at Starscream that I…I shot at them, I shot at them and one hit their shoulder…”

“So wait, the energon puddle that we found by you,” Bulkhead brought up, remembering the huge pool of it with the glass shards. “That wasn’t from your side, was it?”

“…no, the energon puddle wasn’t from me, but it wasn’t from the sparkling either, ” Arcee continued, delaying her answer while not looking up at Bulk. “They tripped when I shot them the first time and fell, but I was already charged to shoot again. The bolt went flying…Starscream, the fragger he jumped in front of them and took the blow to the face. He…he cursed me out for it and compared me to  _ Airachnid _ of all people! He…ugh, it’s not right!”

:: _ Wha- _ :: Bumblebee tried to ask, but was cut off by Arcee suddenly pushing off the medical berth to stand up. That hatred had returned in her optics, burning brightly as she stopped briefly and whipped around at everyone else.

“He’s offlined thousands of cybertronians, was the second in command of the Decepticons, and he killed Cliffjumper! And now that we know he has a sparkling, suddenly you’re all suddenly defending him?! He’s still a murderer! Why does he get to have a second chance after killing our own?! Why does he get mercy when Cliff didn’t?! Cliff would have wanted me to get revenge for his death! So why can’t I?!”

The femme glared at all of them for a few seconds as the anger lingered in the air before storming off with her arms crossed over her chestplates. She walked out of the foyer and down the main hallway, Bee getting up from his spot and trying to go after her. He had only seen her this angry when fighting with Airachnid and he wanted to be a good friend and comfort her. :: _ Arcee, wait- _ ::

“Let her go, Bumblebee.” The young scout felt a servo on his shoulder, Optimus standing behind him and keeping him from following her wherever she was going. “She was overwhelmed with today’s events and needs some time to rest and recover. Arcee will come around, but she needs to be alone for now.”

Bumblebee looked back at the femme, who was now all the way down the hall as she stomped around the corner. Knowing her, the scout knew she was going towards Cliffjumper’s room. Arcee utterly refused against cleaning it out after he passed on to the Well, her still holding onto the past and wanting to remember how everything was. Bee has caught her staring at his room, zoning completely out and sometimes talking to the door as if it was Cliff himself. When he asked Ratchet about it, the medic said something about different people grieving differently than others and that visiting his hab and reliving his memories was Arcee’s way of doing it.

The commotion in the main room soon lessened in the next hour. It was getting late into the evening and Optimus had told all who were present that they would discuss what to do about Starscream’s escape in the morning. Bumblebee and Bulkhead eventually had gone out to sit on curbside duty for the kids and Arcee had speedily left the base at some point out the main door before anyone had the chance to ask her where she was going. The only ones left in the foyer was Ratchet, who was updating some of the base’s systems and working on fixing up some toys that Bulk may or may not have destroyed, and Optimus himself.

The Prime’s mind was busy thinking about the new information given about the defected seeker, who was now supposedly on the run from both them and the Decepticons. He was not to act as if Arcee didn’t have a point. Starscream was still a war criminal and he had still killed one of their closest friends, but most of today’s events were instigated by Arcee herself and there was a slight possibility that if none of that had happened, Starscream would be among them. Whether it would be in a cell or not, they still would have gained a valuable asset and might have been able to end the war.

And apparently, Optimus wasn’t the only one thinking about these new developments.

Once he had finished filling in reports at the terminal, he walked over to the medbay to check on Ratchet, who had a tendency to ignore his need for recharge in favor of work. Upon entering, he found the medic standing at his workbench and playing with the disc in his servo, just inspecting and examining it.

“Something on your mind, old friend?” the Prime asked the old mech, coming up behind him quietly.

Ratchet almost jumped out of his plating, grabbing at his chestplates as his sparkrate spiked incredibly high. “By Primus, Optimus! You almost gave me a spark seizure!” he berated the Prime, taking a couple seconds to calm his systems down again. He was still clutching the disc in his servo.

“I apologize, Ratchet. I did not mean to startle you,” Optimus replied. “I couldn’t help but notice that you were lost in thought.”

The old mech looked back down at the disc in his servo, sighing heavily through his vents before setting it down on the workbench in front of him. “The idea that a sparkling, possibly the first in four million years, is injured and out there with a mech that’s known to only have a sense of self-preservation doesn’t sit right with me,” Ratchet shared, looking back over his shoulder at Prime.

“I can understand your worry, but if what Arcee informed us was correct, I believe that the sparkling is in good servos.”

“But out there? With no energon, or medical equipment? With no base or anything to provide for them? Optimus, they are not safe, nor well equipped to survive in Earth’s elements. We don’t even know how old the sparkling is! How do we know Starscream won’t just up and leave it in the middle of nowhere?!”

The Prime took a deep vent. “It would be reasonable to assume that the sparkling was the motivation behind Starscream defecting from the Decepticons in the first place. I can only assume that he is one of their creators, and must not have felt safe keeping his sparkling in that environment any longer. When he asked to join our cause earlier today, I could sense he was doing it not for his own personal gain, but out of desperation. Bumblebee seemed to have witnessed the same.”

“Then why wasn’t he upfront about him having a sparkling?! I would think that it would be high on his list of priorities to inform us about!” the old mech argued back, having turned around to face Optimus.

“I believe he tried, but he may have felt that if we knew about them, we would let our prejudice get in the way and remove them from his custody. Even worse, he may have believed that we wouldn’t hold true to our promise and simply lock him away, never being able to see his sparkling again. Of course, these are speculations, but I can tell that you yourself were thinking of taking the sparkling away from Starscream, old friend.”

Ratchet froze for a moment, optics going wide as he heard Optimus’ claim. He felt like he should have been offended by such a thing. As a medic, he would never take a sparkling away from their creators. But at the moment, he had other thoughts in mind, like how this sparkling was just attacked and needed immediate medical attention. Half his processor was panicking as this sparkling didn’t have any records, meaning no medical history he could check, and the other half was still trying to understand how  _ Starscream _ , of all mechs, had a sparkling.

“I would never, Optimus,” he finally said, “but I cannot lie and say that I don’t want an innocent life pulled into whatever mess Starscream has made for himself. With threats like MECH out there, I don’t want such a young life in the middle of the fray.”

“Neither do I, Ratchet,” the Prime acknowledged. “While it should not be our top priority to search for Starscream and his sparkling, as we have other important issues to address, bringing them both back to base would be ideal for all parties involved. I fear, like you, that they might not be able to protect themselves when the Decepticons go looking for them.”

“The Decepticons?” Ratchet asked, brows furrowed in confusion. “But from what Arcee told us, Megatron had tried to kill Starscream in that cave in a week ago. If anything, he would be celebrating that his traitorous second is gone. Why would he willingly force his troops to go looking for them?”

“This sparkling’s other creator may still be alive,” Optimus informed his old friend, a frown deepening as he looked towards the open map on his terminal. He had been trying to find where Starscream may have flown after fleeing. “And I cannot imagine that they would be too happy when they find that both Starscream and their sparkling are gone.”

**Author's Note:**

> Lemme know how you like the story so far! Feedback is always appreciated and so is a healthy serving of comments and kudos! <3


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